-Hindustan Times Government’s decision is aimed to cut dependence of small and marginal farmers on usurious informal private lenders. The government has streamlined lending norms in schemes such as the Kisan Credit Card to boost institutional credit flow to small and marginal farmers who make up over 90% of people engaged in agriculture and, as a class, are highly vulnerable to risks. The aim is to cut their dependence on usurious...

-Livemint.com Loan waiver promises fell short of farmers’ expectations in states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janta Party’s (BJP’s) poll promise in Karnataka to waive off farm loans is likely to intensify demands for a similar waiver in other states such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan which go to polls this year. In February last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to waive off farm loans...

-Hindustan Times Lip service: Amarinder Singh sought votes on the promise of a waiver, but now faces heat as more than half the state’s farmers have been left out of the scheme. Bathinda: The weather-beaten face of Rajpal Singh shows signs of anxiety as he stands in one corner of his eight-acre farmland in Punjab’s Bathinda, surveying the standing wheat crop that is almost ready for harvest. Singh might get a reasonable price...

-The Hindu Business Line Kota Neelima digs into farmer suicide cases to chronicle lives often labelled as collateral damage In last November, when All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella organisation of around 190 farmer groups from across the country, organised a Kisan Mukti Sansad in Delhi, there was one event that moved almost everyone of thousands present there. About two dozens children of those farmers who had committed suicide in...

-The Hindu Business Line Eleven years since its inception, the State’s farmer’s debt relief commission has quietly eased the burden of debt on poor farmers, and grown to be a model worth emulating Earlier this week 35,000 debt-ridden farmers coursed through Maharashtra, walking 180 km on blistered soles, to converge at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan demanding freedom from debt and fair compensation for their produce. As the government scrounged for solutions, it could’ve...