-Livemint.com Considering the meticulous and methodical preparations that went into making the farmers protests count, Puntamba village’s moment of glory appears well deserved Puntamba, Maharashtra: Sarjerao Jadhav, a farmer in Puntamba village of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra, remembers the day when a special gram sabha (village panchayat assembly) passed the resolution saying farmers would go on strike from 1 June. “On 3 April, when we moved this resolution, we thought we would begin...

-Livemint.com Doling out farm loan waivers without addressing rural distress is just kicking the can down the road and playing into the hands of the moral hazard brigade Last week, farmers agitating for better prices for their produce of onions and pulses—prices for both of which have witnessed a steep fall in recent months—in Mandsaur district of western Madhya Pradesh turned violent. Coming in the backdrop of a similar agitation by farmers in...

-The Telegraph Bhopal: The turbaned, white-haired, kurta-dhoti-wearing "Tauji" figures are there too, but one outstanding feature of the current farmer agitation in Madhya Pradesh are its jeans-clad, smartphone-wielding spearheads. If the veteran "Kakkaji" Shiv Kumar Sharma is the public face of the movement, which lacks a central leadership, much of the spadework is being done by a band of young, bilingual, stats-savvy and largely apolitical agriculture graduates. Their leader Kedar Sirohi, who is...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation may not have hit agriculture production but it is the cause for the current unrest When demonetisation happened, many, including this writer, thought the decision, taken at the start of rabi plantings in November, would significantly impact farm production. We were proved wrong. Good monsoon rains, after successive drought years, besides the timely onset of winter conducive to germination, turned out to be strong motivations for farmers...

-The Hindu Managers of around 3,000 privately-run markets are to meet and protest new rules that ban sale of animals for slaughter at cattle markets Fridays are festive days at Pachokhara. For nearly half-a-century now, farmers, cattle-rearers and tradesmen have made the weekly trip to the cricket stadium-sized grounds of the Upadhyay family— prominent local land-owners — to trade cattle. A dirt road splits the ground into a section for buffaloes and another for...