-IANS Dubbed the Kadwanchi model, the watershed project has given farmers year-round access to water. Jalna: When massive crop failure and farmers’ suicide afflicted the Marathwada region in Maharashtra during the 2012-16 drought, farmers in three villages of Jalna district were not much concerned about the lack of rainfall. A watershed project had obviated their need to look at the heavens every season. Enough water was available in the 1,888 hectares area comprising...

-Newsclick.in Forget 50 percent profit over the cost of production, the farmers were forced to sell their produce at well below the minimum support price and the cost of production, pushing them deeper into debt. Farming turning increasingly unviable across vast swathes of India, and the Narendra Modi-led government not delivering on the BJP’s election promise to “make agriculture rewarding” lie behind the massive protests that have rocked several BJP-ruled states in...

-The Telegraph The Narendra Modi government's record in tacitly supporting the actions of a bunch of vigilante thugs who have been terrorizing the country, especially the Muslims and the Dalits, in the guise of gau rakshaks, or opponents of love jihad, or 'nationalists', has been so outrageous that it has grabbed all the critical attention. In the process, the government's abysmal failures in other spheres have gone virtually unnoticed. One such...

-The Hindu Business line Distressed farmers are demanding loan waivers, but that should not deflect focus from what needs to be done and undone to address the root cause of the agrarian crisis The farmers’ unrest across the country, and particularly across several BJP-ruled States, appears to have caught the central government by surprise. But it should really not have done so. Ever since candidate Narendra Modi in 2014 promised the farmers...

-Livemint.com Forgiving farm loans is no solution. The data shows there’s a far more fundamental problem—most agricultural households are unable to keep body and soul together. There’s nothing new about rural distress. Nor is it surprising. If the income of almost 70% of farm households is less than their consumption expenditure, according to the government’s own data, then it’s obvious they’ll be “distressed”. Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion from the National Sample...