-The Economic Times The government should liquidate wheat stocks through exports and sales in the open market and share the proceeds with farmers to raise their income levels, a government panel suggested. In its latest report to the agriculture ministry, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which recommends a minimum support price (MSP) for agriculture crops, is said to have maintained that there is no reason to lift the...

-The Hindu Pokhari village in Maharashtra’s Buldhana district continues to reel under a spate of farmer suicides. From 1998 till now, nothing seems to have changed A phone call informing him about the twin suicides of his father and older brother changed 23-year-old Sunil Wagh’s life forever. On September 28, his father Shivaji, 55, and brother Baliram, 28, hung themselves, Shivaji at his farm and Baliram at his home in Pokhari village...

-Outlook State-owned banks have been asked to strictly adhere to the March, 2014 time-line for converting all Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) to ATM cards, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said. "All KCCs will be converted to ATM cards. I have impressed upon all chairpersons of the banks that this time-line must be strictly adhered to," Chidambaram said following a meeting with the chief executives of state-run banks. State-owned lenders were asked to convert...

-Pratirodh Bureau Condemning the arrest of woman tribal-activist and journalist Dayamani Barla in Jharkhand, rights activists have demanded that the "false cases" against her be dropped and that she be immediately released.   The police have reopened an earlier case registered in 2006, when she spent fourteen days in Judicial Custody, after being charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.   She was arrested again this month, and when granted bail on 19th...

-Frontline After the year-long Jansamvad Yatra and Jansatyagraha, the Ekta Parishad has a written commitment from the Rural Development Ministry to advance land reforms.  Celebration and caution. These sentiments dominated the deliberations of senior activists of the Ekta Parishad as they gathered at Delhi’s Gandhi Peace Foundation office on October 18, one week after the organisation and the Union government had signed a 10-point agreement to advance land reforms. The agreement had...