-Livemint.com Raju Shetty, SSS founder and MP from Hatkanangle, says Maharashtra farmers are feeling ‘let-down and betrayed’ by three years of the Modi rule Mumbai: The ‘Sangharsha Yatra’ launched by all opposition parties in Maharashtra to demand a farm loan waiver may have ended but chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is unlikely to see any let-up in the farmers’ protest across the state. What is worse for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government...

-Hindustan Times A new report examining 25 years of India’s economic liberalisation says exclusion of a large section of Dalits and Muslims have not gained adequately from the growth unlike more influential empowered sections of the society As India’s economy grew rapidly, the inequality between the richest and the poorest rose, the number of landless farmers increased and employment generation was lowest in 2015, says a new report examining 25 years...

-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....

-Livemint.com Farm loan waivers are a bad idea. They were a bad idea in 2008 when the UPA was in power, and continue to be so in 2017 with the NDA in power Several parts of India are in the grip of an agrarian crisis. In part, this is because of the cumulative effect of bad monsoons. Farmers in many parts of India are still dependent on the annual rains which were deficient...

-Down to Earth Will the Aayog's vision be any different than the top-down approach of its predecessor, the Planning Commission? WITH THE end of the 12th Five Year Plan on March 31, India’s 65-year tryst with five-year economic development planning has come to an end. In 2014, when the National Democratic Alliance government scrapped the Planning Commission and replaced it with the National Institute of Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, it announced...