-Livemint.com * At a time when rural incomes are sliding, the only existing safety net for the farmer is failing * High costs of reinsurance due to erratic weather, a spike in claims, political interference in crop loss estimation are reasons that forced some insurers to leave the business NEW DELHI: Santosh Kumar’s first brush with insurance left a bitter aftertaste. A farmer’s son, 26-year-old Kumar from Bihar’s Araria district felt betrayed when...

-Livemint.com * Outdated ideas of constructing dams and embankments have increased monsoon floods in India * The attempt to control rivers is the result of a British colonial hangover, even though western countries are moving away from dams In 13 states of India this year, the monsoon appeared in the form of floods. The same happened in the Terai region of Nepal, Karachi and the Neelum valley area in Pakistan, several low-lying districts...

-Firstpost.com Landless labourers in Bihar benefit from the silt that comes down from the Himalayas by growing vegetables, but it is an extremely tough life, with very little profit for the farmer Every year after the festival of Diwali, Pramod Prasad, a landless farmer from the Surajpur village in the Bairia block of West Champaran in Bihar, packs a set of clothes and some utensils to set out for the Gandak River....

-India Water Portal More than 1000 villages of the state are expected to be affected by a severe water crisis. Lokesh Verma, a farmer from Nainital’s Chanfi village, says this is the third year in a row that he is bearing losses in agriculture. “I have lost around Rs 2 lakh and there’s a debt of Rs 70,000 to pay off. I grow strawberries, guavas and peas in my 15 bighas of...

-IndiaClimateDialogue.net In north Bihar, where floods devastate standing crops with increasing regularity in an era of climate change, a marginalised community is fighting all odds to protect an indigenous flood-resistant variety of rice. Sahorwa village is caught between the embankments of two major rivers in north Bihar. Between the Kosi River’s western embankment and Kamla Balan river’s eastern embankment, this village of 110 Musahar families remains flooded for seven to eight months...