-The Hindu With the Land Acquisition Bill in the limelight, nobody is talking about the real reforms that farmers need. A major survey finds that almost half the respondents don't want to continue with agriculture. The unseasonal rains over the last few weeks have resulted in enormous loss of crop output across many States of North India. This has shifted attention from the issue of land acquisition to other important problems faced...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: A staggering Rs 460 crore disbursed by the Maharashtra government as compensation for Drought-hit farmers has come right back to the state's coffers. The key reason it could not be distributed, officials admit, is that lakhs of farmers impacted by the calamity do not have bank accounts - now a mandatory requirement for aid recipients. Since 2014, Maharashtra has been allotting aid only to bank accounts of...

-LATimes.com In Indian state, thousands of villages sit nearly empty as people leave to become migrant workers India farm crisis, compounded by Drought, forces farmers to eke out living as migrant laborers It shouldn't be tough to run into a human being most anywhere in a country of 1.2 billion people. Yet in Bodkha village in western India, there is hardly anyone visible on a recent steamy afternoon. The streets here are deserted not...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: The Maharashtra government is likely to bring farmers' suicides under insurance cover to enable higher financial compensation to the victims' families, state Agriculture Minister Eknath Khadse has told The Indian Express. The development comes at a time when the government is grappling with Drought across 24,000 villages and an increasing number of farmer suicides is being reported from the Marathwada region. Statistics show that almost 85 to 90...

-The Indian Express Indian farmers are under stress this year. Earlier, many of them lost their crops in the kharif season, which was almost a Drought with monsoon rains falling 12 per cent below their long-period average. Now unseasonal rains have impacted them adversely in the rabi season. Agri-GDP growth this year, expected to be a meagre 1.1 per cent before the unseasonal rains, may fall flat to just zero, if...