-The Hindu Business Line The only way this story of the Indian farmer will change is if policymakers ensure better remuneration for them The peasant (in India) is born in debt, lives in debt, dies in debt and bequeaths debt. This is what Sir Malcolm Darling, a famous British researcher and writer, wrote in 1925 after studying the condition of undivided Punjab’s peasants. Had Darling been alive today he would have rephrased his...

-Livemint.com Panel aims to find ways to diversify risks in farming, examine how integrated farming can boost incomes New Delhi: The central government has set up a panel to suggest ways to double farm incomes by 2022, as promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The task of the inter-ministerial committee will prepare a blueprint to transition farm policies from being production oriented to based on incomes or value addition. The committee will look...

-Hindustan Times About 330 million people are affected by drought in 10 states as 256 districts reel from severe water shortages and poor farmers suffer crop losses. The current dry spell is partly because of two back-to-back years of bad monsoons. Policy makers have no control over fickle weather whims. As credit rating and research agency Crisil points out, the rising frequency of weather shocks amid higher vulnerabilities has compounded agrarian...

-Livemint.com The efforts of the government in revamping the crop insurance and land titling schemes are long-term solutions which will take time to bear results The agricultural sector is facing its worst moment in the last three decades. The last time India saw such distress caused by back-to-back deficient rains was during the drought of 1986-87 and 1987-88. The severity of the situation is evident from the stories of migration and...

-Livemint.com The perception of a farmer as a ‘dumb peasant’ in public policy lies at the core of the agrarian crisis Last month, the agriculture ministry informed Parliament that 2,806 farmers committed suicide in 2015 due to “agrarian reasons”. The data further showed that the highest number of suicides were recorded in Maharashtra (1,841), followed by Punjab (449), Telangana (342), Karnataka (107) and Andhra Pradesh (58), among others. What is common to...