-The Hindu Hyderabad-based Balamitra Foundation’s project of distributing menstrual hygiene kits in Andhra’s Billalavalasa village has started conversations on a topic often brushed under the carpet When Sravani got her first period, she had no idea how to manage the bleeding since nobody had spoken about it to her. Even her mother was hush-hush about it. She ended up using cloth and missing a week’s class at school. Several girls like her...

-Society for Social and Economic Research The economic reforms which were started in 1991 shifted the focus of fertilizer policies away from playing a leading role in building the fertilizer industry and ensuring the availability of fertilizers at affordable prices to farmers. Under the neo-liberal policy framework, reducing the fiscal burden of fertilizer subsidies and the foreign exchange burden of fertilizer-related imports became the overriding concerns of the state.  Interestingly, the post-liberalisation...

-The Hindu Business Line All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), welcomed the four farm legislations passed by the Punjab Assembly and urged all other States to follow the model so that the Centre’s three farm laws can be nullified. AIKS General Secretary and senior CPI(M) leader Hannan Mollah said the States and the Centre should enact a law promoting “Peasant-Worker Social Cooperatives” against corporatisation of agriculture. He said the passage of the Bills...

-PTI/ The Hindu In the meeting of the State council of Ministers held at the Chief Minister’s residence, the effects of Centre’s three new laws on the farmers were discussed Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Tuesday said his government will bring a bill against the Centre’s farm laws on the lines of Punjab. The Chief Minister announced this on Twitter, hours after the Punjab assembly unanimously passed four bills and adopted a...

-Newsclick.in In 2006, chief minister Nitish Kumar scrapped the APMC Act in Bihar and the destructive effects can be seen in the seething anger amongst farmers. What the Narendra Modi government recently did through passing laws to deregulate agricultural trade, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had accomplished 14 years ago, in 2006. Soon after becoming chief minister in alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he scrapped Bihar’s Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC)...