-The Indian Express Government cannot afford to wait any longer to address the building agricultural distress. The government and the political class seem oblivious to a deepening farm crisis, resulting from back-to-back monsoon failures and falling crop prices. One indicator of the growing agrarian distress is farmer suicides, no longer a phenomenon confined to Vidarbha or Telangana. The current year has seen farmers even in states like Karnataka, Odisha and Madhya...

-The Pioneer Bhubaneswar: The increasing instances of farmers’ suicides due mainly to failure of crops and burden of loans incurred from different sources have brought traumatic shocks and a shattering blow to the farming community in Odisha and brazen shame to the present dispensation at the helm. It appears that the State administration is never worried and concerned about the agonies and tragedies of the poor cultivators. As reported, an astounding number...

-The Indian Express Over-dependence on fossil fuels will hurt sustainable development in India For decades, mature economies have seen their jobs being off-shored to newly industrialising countries. To stop the bleeding, they are working hard to unleash the digital and renewable energy revolutions. The aggressive push to regain competitiveness by digital automation has been widely noted. What is less understood is the logic behind the energy transformation. In manufacturing economies, the cost...

-DNA Wondering about the plight of the rural population facing successive droughts which has to buy pulses, South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) laments how no benefit of the price hike is reaching actual pulse farmers. While most link the current tur (pigeon pea) dal crisis with raging market prices, storage issues, hoarding and economics, a new study highlighting the making of the crisis - by South Asia Network...

-Livemint.com Drought declaration can provide farmers relief through compensation for crop damage and restructuring of loans New Delhi: Even though the monsoon ended with a 14% rainfall deficit, with nearly half the country’s districts facing a shortage of over 20%, states are delaying declaring a drought that could provide immediate relief to farmers by compensating for crop damage and restructuring farm loans. The June-September monsoon, which irrigates over half the country’s farm...