-The Indian Express These protests, preceded by sit-ins across Punjab, are expected to gather steam after September 14, when Parliament convenes for the Monsoon Session. Jalandhar, New Delhi and Pune: On Thursday, farmer organisations in Haryana defied prohibitory orders imposed amid the pandemic to hold a rally at the Pipli wholesale grain market near Kurukshetra. They even blocked the Delhi-Chandigarh national highway for a couple of hours, when the police initially did...

-Down to Earth Exceptional growth in agriculture and acreage in kharif season precipitate a crisis like never before for farmers   In recent times, agriculture made headlines for all the wrong reasons: Farmers quitting Cultivation; the sector turning into a perennial loss-making enterprise; and the country’s official policy to downsize the dependence on agriculture to reduce overall economic hardship among the poorest of the population. Agriculture’s fast-declining economic importance reached such an extent...

-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips   It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under Cultivation this season. There are more...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-The Telegraph Delay in clearing dues affecting Muzaffarnagar farmers as Cultivation is their only source of income Lucknow: Sugarcane farmers in Muzaffarnagar have alleged that the eight sugar mills in the district have been delaying payments totalling Rs 1,300 crore, a perennial problem of late clearance of dues that is this time hurting the cultivators even more because of the economic crisis perpetrated by the pandemic. Preparing to protest while alleging that the...