-Tribune India Policy shift towards market-oriented management will hit marginal farmers hard There is unfolding of the policy of the NDA government towards agriculture. Contrary to election speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government has kept quiet about the Swaminathan Commission report about fixing the MSP of agricultural commodities at cost plus 50 per cent. At the same time, the government has given indication towards reduced FCI operations. It has been...

-Tehelka Shamefully, in India, a large percentage of the population still defecates in the open. However, a village in Tamil Nadu has scripted a rare success story by becoming an Open Defecation-Free Village. Nisha Ponthathil documents how the people of Amarambedu near Chennai triumphed over habit with a little help from the civil society Twenty-nine-year-old R Karthick, a resident of Amarambedu village, situated about 65 kilometres away from Tamil Nadu's capital Chennai,...

-The Indian Express Indian farmers are under stress this year. Earlier, many of them lost their crops in the kharif season, which was almost a drought with monsoon rains falling 12 per cent below their long-period average. Now unseasonal rains have impacted them adversely in the rabi season. Agri-GDP growth this year, expected to be a meagre 1.1 per cent before the unseasonal rains, may fall flat to just zero, if...

-The Indian Express The government's attempt to amend the UPA's land acquisition law is facing stiff resistance in Parliament and outside. The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, combined three different approaches to resolve conflict over land. One is to let money speak. It increased compensation amounts significantly. The second is to let farmers speak. Projects involving private companies had to earn the consent of 80 per cent of...

-The Financial Express The BJP's resounding Lok Sabha victory after years of policy paralysis raised a widely-shared hope that the government, led by PM Narendra Modi, will put India back on track by resuming inclusive growth. And that agriculture and rural development would be at the centre of the agenda. Half the employment still comes from agriculture, though it contributes just 14% to the GDP. India contains the largest number of...