-The Hindu Several interventions are needed on the demand and supply side to alleviate farm distress Loan waivers remain the preferred solution for governments to tackle farm distress. S. Mahendra Dev and M. Govinda Rao talk about the inability of governments to think of long-term solutions to tackle farm distress, in a discussion moderated by Vikas Dhoot. Edited excerpts: * Despite farm productivity rising, severe distress in the sector is a concern. How...

-The Times of India AURANGABAD: A patchwork of brown fields is visible from the air as you fly into this drought-hit region in rural Maharashtra. But amid the dry land is a growing mosaic of blue and brown squares and rectangles. These are farm ponds: Large earthen structures that have spread across rural Maharashtra in the past five years, thanks to a raft of central and state subsidies. The ponds were conceived...

-The Hindu Raipur: Selling his paddy crop was a pleasantly different experience this year for Yogesh Nareti, a farmer with 17 acres of land in Makadi village in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, which goes to the polls this week. “During the BJP reign, selling the produce at Large-sized Agricultural Multipurpose Cooperative Societies (LAMPS) was tedious. The entire process used to take two months,” he recalls. “Now, besides offering a lucrative MSP [minimum support...

  Growth in rural wages not only indicates economic prosperity of the masses, it is also considered important so as to generate effective demand for goods and services, which is produced by various sectors of the economy. When money becomes available in the hands of rural workers due to government spending on programmes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), it generates demand for commodities. The production of commodities...

-The Times of India PILIBHIT: Raising concern over depleting groundwater, State Wetland Authority (SWA) has decided to ban the cultivation of summer paddy that survives only on the groundwater.   According to an estimate of the state agriculture department, summer paddy — the transplantation of which has already been started — is produced in around 3.5 lakh hectares in more than 20 districts of western UP stretched up to the Tarai region. The decision...