-Frontline.in The draft Bill on land leasing in Punjab is aimed at promoting the interests of agribusiness corporations. It will have devastating consequences for peasants in the State. THERE is no doubt that agricultural land leasing laws in India should be amended to make land leasing lawful and easier. The NITI Aayog Report (2016) proposed, on the grounds of efficiency and equity, a formal model law on leasing (Model Agricultural Land Leasing...

-Livemint.com The ongoing reforms won’t help if they remain deprived of market access and suffer low demand Earlier this week, as part of the package for Aatmanirbhar Bharat, the Cabinet approved the proposals for agricultural marketing reforms announced in May by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The government has approved the The Farming Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020, along with amendments to the Essential Commodities Act. It has also...

-The Hindu True self-reliance won’t come from relentless industrialisation, but from localisation and decentralisation, as demonstrated by these remarkable stories of empowered rural communities Not so long ago, Dalit women Farmers in Telangana used to face hunger and deprivation. Today, they have contributed foodgrains for pandemic relief. Farmers on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border have been sending organic produce to Bengaluru even during the lockdown. And Adivasi villages in central India are using...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Huge quantities of cash crops lie unsold across India – like cotton in Maharashtra. A hunger crisis looms, yet Farmers in Vidarbha plan to sow cotton, not food crops, once again this kharif season Seventy-year-old Kisan Sakhru Pawar, patriarch of a joint farming family in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, is very anxious. The climbing Covid-19 graph is not the main reason for his anxiety. His concern: unsold cotton. “We have 350 quintals of cotton,...

-TheWire.in As a fresh spotlight hits India's rural employment programme, two suggestions have been offered to “repurpose” MGNREGA to utilise the additional labour force that have returned to their villages. Due to the sudden lockdown and resultant job losses, over one crore people have returned to their homes, some walking hundreds of kilometres, others using all conceivable means of transport – buses, trucks, trailers, concrete mixers, Shramik trains, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, auto...