-The Indian Express UP is truly at the crossroads: The state is uniquely poised to leverage opportunities from agriculture and build on the base laid by entrepreneurs, whether in sugar, potatoes, buffalo meat, leather or mentha oil. But, it is equally in danger of being taken back by decades, courtesy leaders with exclusivist and narrow-minded visions. Efforts to market it as an Uttam Pradesh notwithstanding, UP or Uttar Pradesh, is for...

-The Hindu Business Line They account for a third of the agricultural workforce, but don’t get the benefits and opportunities the menfolk enjoy India celebrated its first Women Farmer’s Day on October 15, but the word farmer or kisan is still seen as being synonymous with a male farm worker. This perception is built on two assumptions — first, farming is a masculine profession; and, second, when women are involved in farm...

-Livemint.com Merely putting the labour component of other projects in MGNREGA may not lead to any value addition There are several studies and reports that clearly show that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has accomplished its objectives to a large extent. Initially, this government derided the programme as some kind of a dole—but it later acknowledged its role in rural development, if reluctantly. The chief ministers’ council in...

-The Indian Express Lobbies with no stakes in dairy husbandry are undermining the achievements of crossbreeding through false glorification of the Indian cow. Livestock is an important asset for Indian farmers to supplement their agricultural income. Cattle and buffaloes have been traditionally maintained by them for milk production as well as manure and bullock supply. With 191 million cattle and 109 million buffaloes, India accounts for 30.3 per cent of the global...

-The Indian Express The government’s projections of milk production almost doubling and incomes of farmers more than trebling by 2023-24 seem rather rosy. It took over one-and-a-half decades for India’s milk production to roughly double from 80.6 million tonnes (mt) in 2000-01 to 163.7 mt in 2016-17. But if the Narendra Modi government’s National Action Plan for Dairy Development: Vision-2022 is to be believed, it’s possible not only to achieve the next...