-The Hindu Say policymakers induce farmers to adopt incongruent crop pattern, causing water crisis Pune: The water crisis in Maharashtra is a “policy-induced failure”, according to economists and water academics who have specifically warned of the ‘desertification’ of the parched Marathwada region in the near future. “It is the ecological illiteracy of policy-makers and the selfishness of the power elite in inducing farmers across Marathwada to adopt a crop pattern that is not...

-The Indian Express Home to some 400 Santhals, an indigenous tribe, Mahuadanr has a cemented road, but most of the house are made of mud, with few pucca houses. The village faces an “acute water shortage” in summers and locals barely eat nutritious food. Dumka: In Jharkhand’s Mahuadanr village, which falls under the Anansol Kuruwa panchayat in the Dumka Lok Sabha constituency, JMM party chief Shibu Soren — the sitting MP...

-TheWire.in Veerpal Kaur, who lost her father and then husband to the growing spate of farmer suicides in Punjab, says neither the SAD-BJP alliance nor the Congress is addressing the issue. Dharamvir Singh was being considered, one thing played in their favour – both the bride and groom had lost their fathers, both farmers, to suicide. Kaur’s father drank poison in 1995 and Singh’s hanged himself in 1990. “That was what clinched it....

-The Hindu Business Line Climate change and other agrarian distress are forcing the farming community to scrounge for a living outside its comfort zone The work I do — editing the work of journalists reporting on water issues in the Himalayan region — gives me a close-up of how climate change is disrupting agriculture. Almost 80 per cent of water usage in India, and most of its neighbouring countries, is for agriculture....

-The Indian Express The Sainis, who have grown brinjal on three kanals (less than half-an-acre) of rented land, are at the centre of a brewing storm over the “use of Bt brinjal” or other genetically modified crop in Haryana. Fatehabad: “WHAT CRIME have we committed?” asks Miro Rani, the fear visible on her face. Rani, 50, is the wife of Ishar Saini, a 62-year-old brinjal farmer near Ratia town in Fatehabad. Advertising The...