-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...
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In Maharashtra, suicide figures shoot through the roof -Priyanka Kakodkar
-The Times of India MUMBAI: Farmer suicides in Maharashtra are intensifying with as many as 1,088 cases reported in 2015 by the end of May. This is almost twice the figure reported just two months ago. Between January and March, the state government had reported 601 cases. The suicide rate had already begun climbing steeply with the onset of the drought last year which destroyed large swathes of crops. The unseasonal rain...
More »Early imports, higher wages under NREGA: Preparing for monsoon blues
-Hindustan Times Policy makers have no control over fickle weather whims and complex forecasts. Regardless of the eventual course and quality of summer rains brought on by drafts of breeze that stream 8,000 km from the southern Pacific, the early predictions did give an early heads up of what was likely in the next few months. Yet, every drought year, India’s response to deal with scanty summer rains has been knee-jerk, marked...
More »Weather department downgrades monsoon forecast to 88%, stokes drought fears; govt 'prays'
-Hindustan Times India’s June-September monsoon, the lifeblood of Asia’s third-largest economy, will most likely be “deficient” this year with the met department downgrading its forecast from 93% to 88%, earth sciences minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday. The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) revision -- which had forecast “below normal” monsoon in April -- will potentially toughen challenges for the Narendra Modi government already battling a Farm Crisis triggered by unseasonal rains in...
More »Narendra Modi government's first year sees record farmer suicides -Yogesh Pawar
-DNA From May 20, 2014 to May 24, 2015 has seen as many as 1,306 farmers suicides, a 40% jump from last year. In the middle of the media blitzkrieg over the completion of a year in office of the Narendra Modi government comes the information that it is anything but 'achche din' in the farmer suicide country of Vidarbha. From May 20, 2014 to May 24, 2015 has seen as many...
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