-The Economic Times MUMBAI: The splotch of red ink on bank balance sheets is set to become bigger as a new scandal in the form of disappearing food stocks in Punjab godowns threatens to burn a Rs 12,000-crore hole in their books and embarrass the Parkash Singh Badal administration. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ordered all banks with exposure to the Punjab government's food borrowing programme to provide for potential...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 3123
Why sugarcane can’t be blamed for Marathwada drought woes -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Every crisis produces its fall guy. This time, it is sugarcane that’s bearing the brunt of the blame for drought, especially in Maharashtra’s worst-affected Marathwada region. Sugarcane, no doubt, requires 2,100-2,200 mm of water, more than the 1,400 mm or so for paddy, 900 mm for cotton, 600 mm for jowar (sorghum) and arhar (pigeon-pea), 550 mm for wheat, and under 500 mm for soyabean and chana (chickpea). But then,...
More »The myth of the dumb Indian peasant -Anil Padmanabhan
-Livemint.com The perception of a farmer as a ‘dumb peasant’ in public policy lies at the core of the agrarian crisis Last month, the agriculture ministry informed Parliament that 2,806 farmers committed suicide in 2015 due to “agrarian reasons”. The data further showed that the highest number of suicides were recorded in Maharashtra (1,841), followed by Punjab (449), Telangana (342), Karnataka (107) and Andhra Pradesh (58), among others. What is common to...
More »Depleting ground water: Dark reality under Punjab's green landscape -Jaideep Sarin
-IANS CHANDIGARH: The green fields of Punjab, which are known to produce a golden harvest year after year to cater to the country's foodgrain needs, have a dark side -- water scarcity. Large areas in the state are staring at low water availability that has the potential of damaging the state's agrarian livelihood in the coming years. "Punjab, the land of five rivers, is staring at a dark future on the water front....
More »Why are India's housewives killing themselves? -Soutik Biswas
-BBC More than 20,000 housewives took their lives in India in 2014. This was the year when 5,650 farmers killed themselves in the country. So the number of suicides by housewives was over 250% more than the farmers. They also comprised 47% of the total female victims. Yet the high number of homemakers killing themselves doesn't make front page news in the way farmer suicides do, year after year. In fact, more than 20,000 housewives...
More »
