-The Hindu Business Line Superfood moringa is proving to be a boon for subsistence farmers Names like PKM 2, Bhagya KDM 1, Rohit 1, Siddhi Vinayaka.... may not ring a bell among urban readers, but those engaged in subsistence farming will recognise these as the high-yielding varieties of Moringa olifera (drumstick tree). This tree (called murungae in Tamil) has been around for ages, but ever since the world at large claimed moringa as...
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Raising farmers plight
-The Pioneer Centre must come up with a national policy The Supreme Court’s intervention for the lack of a national policy to help calamity-hit farmers is welcome. Regardless of what we have at the moment for them, the country's bread-earners must be offered all possible support to strengthen the economy. While taking up a number of public interest litigations, the apex court found that the Government had no policy to tackle the...
More »Towards less-cash agriculture: Well before demonetisation, low credit-driven model came up in Dewas -Vivian Fernandes
-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...
More »Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and economist, speaks to Suvojit Bagchi (The Hindu)
-The Hindu The truth may ultimately prevail about demonetisation, but the government might be able to maintain the loyalty of a large part of the public for a long time, says Amartya Sen More than two months after the demonetisation, Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen says that any proper “economic reasoning could not have sensibly led to such a ham-handed policy.” He predicts that the demonetisation will hit the economy quite...
More »Demonetisation, farmer suicides, and the Union budget -Roshan Kishore
-Livemint.com Crash in farm prices could accentuate bankruptcy, which was the biggest reason for farmer suicides in 2014 and 2015 After two successive years of drought, 2016 was turning out to be a relatively better year for farmers till 8 November. The decision to scrap high-value currency notes, announced on that day, seems to have hit the farm sector the hardest. While credible and timely data on farm incomes and output is hard...
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