-The Hindu The farm loans will be disbursed in two stages during the next crop cycle of kharif season from April 1 to August 31 and rabi season from September 1 to March 31 Jaipur: The Congress government in Rajasthan has identified a whopping 10 lakh farmers for grant of loans through cooperative banks during the next crop cycle, amid allegations by the Opposition BJP that its "populist measure" of farm-loan waiver...

-The Hindu Business Line Working from a mud house in a remote Maharashtra village, Rahibai Popere is taking farming back to its roots Pune: Twenty years ago, when her grandson fell ill, Rahibai Popere was convinced vegetables and foodgrains containing ‘poison’ had made the child unhealthy. She asked her son to stop buying vegetables and foodgrains grown using hybrid seeds, chemicals and fertilisers. And then started a journey to conserve and save indigenous...

-The Hindu A basic income scheme will deliver benefits to the poor only if it comes on top of public services The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining ground globally. It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy. A UBI requires the government to pay every citizen a fixed amount of money on a regular basis and...

-The Hindu Business Line Implementation issues in Fasal Bima Yojana need to be addressed A BusinessLine series from perennially drought-prone Jalna and Parbhani districts in Maharashtra has brought to the fore implementation lapses in the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). Farmers have not been compensated for crop damage, owing to multiple factors. Chief among these is irregularities in crop cutting experiments. The CCEs are meant to be carried in the presence...

-The Hindu Business Line The Union Cabinet has relaxed a condition that requires small and marginal farmers to seed their Aadhaar numbers with their bank accounts for getting the second instalment of payments under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme. While clearing the scheme on February 1, the government had made it mandatory for farmers with less than 2 hectares of land to get Aadhaar seeding done for the second...