-The Hindu Farmers’ protests interrogate the reigning development model.   Alternatives do exist The recent spate of peasant protests across wide swathes of the country points sharply to the unjust folly and sheer unviability of the path of development that India has embraced, especially in the reform era since the late 1980s. Even, say, a modest food critic in metropolitan India collects an immodest annual pay package which can easily go into seven figures....

-The Financial Express Increasing farm productivity alone will not help raise farmers’ income and may even be detrimental. the need is to diversify farmers’ sources of income. One of the most important statements made in recent times by the government was the declaration of its intention to double farmers’ income by 2022. The statement of prime minister Narendra Modi in Bareilly on February 28, 2016, must have made the farmers leap with...

-The Hindu The Compensatory Afforestation Fund is a deeply flawed and unjust mechanism Last month, Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Mahesh Sharma informed Parliament that his Ministry has collected over ?50,000 crore in a Central compensatory afforestation fund (CAF). This money is to be used though the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, 2016 or CAF, a purported mechanism to offset forest loss. Before issuing forest clearances to a...

-Down to Earth Experts say they have already submitted a document to the ICAR about adopting IFS in north-eastern states India needs to adopt a “well designed” integrated farming system (IFS) to realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision to double farmers’ income by 2022, observed the scientists and agricultural experts at the ongoing 105th Indian Science Congress in Manipur today (March 19). “The IFS can enhance farmers’ income if we provide a...

-The Indian Express The government’s projections of milk production almost doubling and incomes of farmers more than trebling by 2023-24 seem rather rosy. It took over one-and-a-half decades for India’s milk production to roughly double from 80.6 million tonnes (mt) in 2000-01 to 163.7 mt in 2016-17. But if the Narendra Modi government’s National Action Plan for Dairy Development: Vision-2022 is to be believed, it’s possible not only to achieve the next...