-Hindustan Times In Mandsaur, demonetisation has disrupted every aspect of the rural economy – land markets, credit networks, procurement, and crop prices. Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh): Traders rued their burnt shops, farmers mourned the death of their sons to police bullets; but as four days of violence drew to a close, both sides could only speak of one thing: demonetisation. “Notebandi destroyed the trust between farmer and trader,” said Sunil Ghatiya, a soybean trader...

-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 Tribune Farmers are determined to take it to a logical conclusion SOMETHING unusual happened last week. Farmers in Maharashtra organised an amazing ‘strike’. Last month farmers in a village of Ahmednagar decided that they would stop sending their produce  — food grains, vegetables, etc. — to cities from June 1. Soon, the call was adopted by the farmers of the entire district. Before anyone could realise, this resolve had extended to...

-The Indian Express A smooth GST regime can break inter-state barriers on movement and facilitate direct linkages between processors and farmers After more than a decade of intense discussion and debate, the GST is finally becoming a reality. Although in its current form, it is not as perfect as was originally envisaged, yet it is being lauded as one of the most transformational reforms since 1991. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was humble...

-Livemint.com The government’s model law for agricultural reforms aims to allow farmers a wider choice of markets beyond the local mandi New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is working on creating a common agricultural market that will improve the lot of farmers and the efficiencies of India’s notoriously inefficient farm-produce markets. The government put out a model law proposing a fundamental reset in the way agricultural markets operate on 24 April....