-Down to Earth The ordinance does not expressly define ‘extraordinary circumstances’: Such legislative ambiguity makes one question the entire exercise of introducing this particular provision As the Union government announced massive reforms as part of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package, attention went to three agriculture sector ordinances related to farmers’ trade, contract farming and amendments in the Essential Commodities Act. While each of the three ordinances have far-reaching implications from legal...

-ThePrint.in Attention deficit of the public, policy dyslexia and lack of political will lie at the roots of the recurring tragedy of flooding in Assam and Bihar. It’s an annual affair. Every year the floods arrive, bring devastation. ‘Reliefs’ arrive, bring consolation. Nothing changes. Water recedes. Drowned for months, the land emerges, drained of life. Hordes of living skeletons teeter on this dead land to build a life again.” It could be this...

-The Indian Express Even though Adityanath announced more than once that needy people will get ration even without a ration card, the fact is that the returnee migrant labourers who don’t have ration cards or their names have been struck off from ration cards because they were not staying in their village, are neither getting the regular quota of ration nor the free quota made available during the coronavirus crisis period. In...

-Down to Earth Instead of putting Punjab farmers at the mercy of big corporates and private players, there is a need to strengthen existing infrastructure The Union government announced three agriculture-related ordinances as part of its novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package — permitting agricultural trade outside the boundaries of market committees, easing regulation and control under the Essential Commodities Act and facilitating contract farming. Out of these, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and...

-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,...