Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-The Indian Express Assembly election results show that deceiving farmers comes with a price Frustration on the farms has reached an inflexion point. All of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promises could actually go against him. To gauge if the farmers’ anger can become a potent political force in 2019, it is important to understand the “farmer’s identity”. Identities rarely exist in neat silos, and that is true of the farmer as...

-The Hindu With farm distress becoming a major electoral issue in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Vikas Pathak visits two pockets of rural India, Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh and Jodhpur district in Rajasthan, and finds that the political instincts of the rural voter are not necessarily rooted in agriculture. A few farmers sit huddled near a statue of Sardar Patel at Balaguda village in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh pouring out...

-The Hindu Braving Maoist call for boycott, villagers exercise franchise Karimnagar (Tenlangana): In spite of heightened naxalite threat, villagers, mostly dominated by tribal communities, have set an example in Telangana by recording over 90% polling in the Maoist stronghold villages in the interior Mahadevpur, Kataram and Mahamutharam mandals adjoining the Chhattisgarh in the erstwhile Karimnagar district, now in Jayashankar-Bhupalapalli district. Braving the Maoist call for poll boycott, people formed serpentine queues to exercise...

-The Hindu The Electoral Bond Scheme inhibits the citizen’s capacity to meaningfully participate in political and public life Early this year the government introduced an Electoral Bond Scheme purportedly with a view to cleansing the prevailing culture of political sponsorship. But the programme’s failings have been so blindingly obvious, and its consequences so utterly devastating to rectitude and transparency in government, that even O.P. Rawat, WHO just retired Chief Election Commissioner, thought...