-Hindustan Times As prices of onions threaten to hit the Rs 100/kg mark, Delhi’s food and civil supplies minister Asim Ahmed Khan sought the Union agriculture ministry’s help to supplement the state’s efforts for ensuring supply of onions to contain retail prices in the market. Khan in a letter to the union minister Radha Mohan Singh wrote that unseasonal rains, which partially destroyed onion crops, led to shortage in wholesale markets in...

-The Hindu Business Line Both the Centre and States need to be prepared for the possibility in peninsular India The bad news is that the met department’s pessimistic monsoon forecast — of it being 7 per cent less than the long-period average (LPA) — is turning out to be right. The monsoon started off with much promise in June, finishing the month with a 16 per cent surplus and kharif sowing doing...

-The Financial Express Two years of bad rain makes even Punjab vulnerable When a Punjab is flagged as an area of some risk following bad rain, it is time to get seriously worried. The state may have, as ratings agency Crisil points out in its latest report on Indian agriculture, as much as 98.8% of its cropped area under irrigation, but with a 50.4% shortfall in rain last year and a likely...

-Frontline As rural Karnataka reels under an unprecedented wave of suicides by farmers, the State administration looks on, unwilling to address the reasons that have rendered rural livelihoods fragile. DEATH stalks rural Karnataka. In the 41 days between July 1 and August 10, as many as 245 farmers committed suicide, an average of six a day; since April 1, 284 farmers have taken their lives. As a bewildered State government gropes...

-The Hindu Industry seeks control on yarn prices, permission to export cloth Nearly three-fourths of the 9 lakh powerloom units in Maharashtra’s Bhiwandi have been on strike since Monday, leaving as many workers jobless and per-day losses of about Rs 150 crore, estimate textile industry associations. The strike has brought half of India’s powerloom sector to a halt, they say, since it comes over and above the production cutbacks in place since...