-Down to Earth Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of Farmers...

-Down to Earth This is because agriculture in India is largely dependent on chemicals including pesticides and their usage has a huge impact on the health of humans, animals, bio-diversity and the environment Pesticides are regulated in India through the Insecticides Act, 1968 and Insecticides Rules, 1971. The experience in administering this Act over the last five decades has exposed certain gaps which spurred the need to propose a new law. The Pesticide...

-Frontline.in The Budget lacks any serious effort to address the main issues of unemployment, agrarian distress and falling incomes, revealing a high level of official insensitivity. A Budget during a time of recession, increasing unemployment, agrarian distress, falling incomes, demand constraint and malnutrition would have done well to first acknowledge the mess that policies have created and then taken steps to provide employment, boost rural incomes, increase purchasing power and thereby demand. Coming...

-The Hindu Coupled with a delay in paddy procurement, rains are adding to the Farmers’ woe as they struggle to find shelter for their stock. BHUBANESWAR: Hundreds of Farmers hit by slow pace in paddy procurement are staring at huge losses as their paddy stocks are exposed to unseasonal rain in Odisha. The State has been receiving widespread rain due to western disturbance since Tuesday. Eighteen of 28 meteorological observation stations in the...

-Outlook India Khammam district in Telangana has taken the initiative to set up temporary decentralised village level camps called “Rythu Mitra Kendras”. The administration of Khammam district in Telangana has taken the innovative initiative of setting up temporary decentralised village level camps called “Rythu Mitra Kendras” during the current agricultural marketing season. These camps are equipped with cotton moisture measurement machines. Through an aggressive communication campaign, small and marginal Farmers have been encouraged...