-Livemint.com Forgiving farm loans is no solution. The data shows there’s a far more fundamental problem—most agricultural households are unable to keep body and soul together. There’s nothing new about rural distress. Nor is it surprising. If the income of almost 70% of farm households is less than their consumption expenditure, according to the government’s own data, then it’s obvious they’ll be “distressed”. Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion from the National Sample...

-VillageSquare.in Although the Maharashtra government has announced a loan waiver, deeply indebted farmers of Marathwada still do not know how they will get the money to buy farm inputs this sowing season ahead of the monsoon Latur (Maharastra): Barma Mind of Gangapur village in Latur district is a small farmer with 4.5 acres of land. He had taken a loan of Rs 54000 from an agriculture cooperative society in April 2015. Much...

-The Indian Express Branding the farmer agitations ‘political’ betrays a lack of understanding There is no proof required that economists commenting on farmer issues have reached an affliction point. When the counsellor one seeks advice from is as callous as saying that the farmers’ agitation was political and justifies it by citing declining farmer suicides and rising farmer prosperity (‘Just why are farmers rioting?’ by Surjit Bhalla, IE, June 10), one can’t...

-Hindustan Times The government plans to cover 10.25 lakh farmers in its waiver scheme, and simple calculation says it involves Rs 20,500 crore. The state has 18 lakh farmers. Of the total, therefore, 56% farmers would be covered. Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday announced crop loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh for farmers who own up to 5 acres of agriculture land and a flat relief...

-Hindustan Times Madhya Pradesh’s Babulal Dahiya is a collector of folk songs and seeds and has sown 110 varieties of rice to preserve them. Bhopal: He is a collector of folk songs and seeds. And it was while collecting Bagheli folklore, this 72-year-old farmer cum Bagheli poet realized that saving folk songs and sayings won’t mean much if the local crop varieties, which repeatedly crop up in the folk literature, are...