-The Hindu Business Line The new scheme offers lower premium, more risk cover and hassle-free settlement Crop insurance schemes have not been a hit with Indian farmers in the past. High premia, limited coverage, complicated ways of assessing losses and delayed payment of compensation have kept farmers away from them. Given the high risk of crop damage in India, with significant loss in food grain production in 18 of the last 54 years...

The budgetary support to interest subvention scheme has increased by almost 14 times between 2006-07 and 2016-17. However, the much-touted subsidised short-term credit scheme provides little help to the small and marginal farmers, apart from tenant farmers. According to the Committee on Medium-term Path on Financial Inclusion, which submitted its report in December 2015, the interest subvention scheme suffers from 3 types of defects: i. Subsidised credit may not be...

-The Telegraph The recent budget talked about the government's plan to double farm incomes in the next five years. This will be done through investments in rural infrastructure, especially irrigation. About 50 per cent of land under foodgrain production in India is irrigated. This means that half of the foodgrain producing land in India faces weather uncertainties and, hence, those working on them face annual (seasonal) variations in income. These variations...

-The Hindu If we run out of groundwater, millions of people will be left without any means to sustain themselves The protest by farmers in Chikballapur recently, over the scarcity of drinking water, received extensive news coverage as it halted Bengaluru in its tracks after key highways were blocked. Interestingly, very little of that coverage was devoted to the groundwater crisis that underpins the problem in such regions. Groundwater plays an important role...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...