-The Indian Express Indian farmers are under stress this year. Earlier, many of them lost their crops in the kharif season, which was almost a drought with monsoon rains falling 12 per cent below their long-period average. Now unseasonal rains have impacted them adversely in the rabi season. Agri-GDP growth this year, expected to be a meagre 1.1 per cent before the unseasonal rains, may fall flat to just zero, if...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...

-Business Standard Though Indian agriculture has grown to be second largest globally, there are many myths and misconceptions. So, let's find the truth. Though the government over the past few years has been focusing on enhancing manufacturing sector's share to India's GDP, contribution of agriculture to the GDP continues to be higher than that of the manufacturing. India has in abundant four critical fundamental resources - light, land, water & labour. Contrary...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-The Indian Express The Bharat Krishak Samaj (BSK) has long urged the merger of the agriculture ministry with the water resources and rural development ministries, in the interests of better coordination. With cooperative federalism gaining currency as an idea, that might just become possible. Now, the panchayati raj and food processing ministries could join the club, leaving agriculture, for all practical purposes, to the states, as envisaged by the Constitution. But...