-The Indian Express Indian farmers are under stress this year. Earlier, many of them lost their crops in the kharif season, which was almost a drought with monsoon rains falling 12 per cent below their long-period average. Now unseasonal rains have impacted them adversely in the rabi season. Agri-GDP growth this year, expected to be a meagre 1.1 per cent before the unseasonal rains, may fall flat to just zero, if...

-The Financial Express In a column in The Financial Express, ("Time to tweak priority-sector lending", goo.gl/6O8AOL, February 6), the author made a case for "tweaking" priority-sector lending (PSL) norms which largely stipulate that the commercial banks direct credit towards certain vulnerable sectors and target population. Specifically, the article argued for revisiting the sectoral targets and cited a reduction in the share of agriculture sector in GDP as a valid reason...

-Hindustan Times Sharmilla Dar, a government schoolteacher in east Delhi, is irritated about a sudden surge in vegetable prices in the last week after they had cooled considerably since a year ago. "Why can't the government keep things affordable?" she asks. For middle-class consumers, food inflation worries are creeping back in. The farm sector is hurting badly after a full year of unprecedented weather havocs - from a partial drought last summer...

-Down to Earth Study also stresses on positive impact of sanitation on nutrition status of children Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico may be rising economic powerhouses, but these fast-expanding, middle-income countries are still home to nearly half of the world's hungry people, numbering 363 million, says a new report. In such a scenario, attention must be paid to those living in the "economic middle" to effectively combat hunger and malnutrition on a...

-Frontline If Budget 2015 is any indication, the Modi government is going beyond what could be called benign neglect of agriculture to policy moves that are likely to harm its viability. IT is scarcely surprising that farmers are upset with the Narendra Modi government. Indeed, the rosy dreams created by that famous campaign advertisement of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when farmers spoke of the high crop prices and better cultivation conditions...