Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said the decision on free power to the farm sector will be discussed in the cabinet but rejected the Planning Commission's contention that it was responsible for the alarming depletion of groundwater in the state. "The farmers of Punjab have been using ground water for the crops and the state has helped whole country to overcome food crises many times," Badal said, reacting to...

The Centre's decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) sharply for pulses, moderately for coarse cereals and oil seeds, and not at all for rice and cotton (the nominal hike for rice merely rolls in the bonus offered last year) is right, in the conventional sense. The signal against increasing acreage for rice this kharif is sound, given the huge stocks with the government. The signalling is right, too,...

The reported decision of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs taken at a meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to keep the minimum support price of cotton unchanged for kharif season 2010-11 has left three million growers of the state unhappy. Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti president Kishore Tiwari said, "The prices were last revised in 2008-09 and during election year it were raised to Rs 3,000 a quintal more...

Punjab farmers have been struck a double blow on the eve of the paddy transplantation season, which starts tomorrow. Reliant on migrant labour to transplant paddy on 26 lakh hectares, they are witnessing a few arrivals on trains coming in from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Farmers also do not have the option of falling back on mechanised transplantation with the experiment launched with full fanfare by the state government last...

The Punjab government’s policy to provide free power to the farm sector has led to alarming depletion of its groundwater besides unleashing a huge power subsidy burden of more than Rs 3,000 crore, the Planning Commission has said. The Commission has asked the SAD-BJP government in the state to do away with free power to the sector and begin charging “appropriate tariff” for it. In a letter to Punjab Chief...