-Livemint.com No matter which party is ruling, onion farmers will always be the victims of a biased state policy Onion prices have plummeted and onion producers in Maharashtra are in distress. Union minister Nitin Gadkari has appealed to them to diversify their production to avoid a repeat of the situation. Such appeals are unfair. For one, the minister was silent when his government brought down onion prices by restricting exports, and two, thanks...

-Livemint.com The APMC legislation has in effect created fragmented markets—small trading zones that can quite easily be captured by trader cartels Makeshift markets have sprung up in several cities in Maharashtra over the past few weeks, after the state government led by Devendra Fadnavis allowed farmers to sell vegetables and fruit directly to consumers. They are now allowed to bring their produce directly to cities rather than sell them in markets...

-Hindustan Times Contrary to the state government’s claims, the response to the Prime Minister Crop Insurance scheme in Maharashtra is lukewarm. About 49 lakh farmers have registered for the insurance this year against the last year’s number of 83 lakh farmers. On the backdrop of the three droughts in the last four years and the similar situation in some other states, the state and central governments had announced to implement the insurance...

-The Indian Express The incidence of farmers taking their own lives is higher in regions where cooperative banks are the weakest. Nanded (Maharashtra): The verdant soyabean fields at Digras today are a far cry from the barren landscape they presented only a few months ago. But for residents of this village in Ardhapur taluka of Nanded district, the memories of drought in three out of the last four years will not fade...

-The Indian Express Government has the opportunity to rein in food inflation on a sustainable basis. In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi counted his government’s achievements. Bringing down inflation from double digits to below six per cent was emphatically mentioned as one that brought relief to the aam aadmi. Without doubt, we witnessed moderation in the overall consumer price index (CPI) and wholesale price index (WPI) levels in the past...