-The Indian Express Booming Indian antelope populations threaten crops in many areas. Farmers are reluctant to strike against them, so the herds have only feral packs to fear. A couple of centuries ago, some four million blackbuck roamed the Indian landmass south of the Himalayas from undivided “Punjab to Nepal and probably in most parts of the Peninsula where the country is wooded and hilly, but not in dense jungle”. At...

-Livemint.com Data from the latest KLEMS India database shows that employment in the Indian economy shrank by 0.1% in 2015-16 and by 0.2% in 2014-15 Mumbai: Employment in the total Indian economy shrank by 0.1% in financial year 2015-16 and by 0.2% in 2014-15. Far from more jobs being created, employment has actually contracted. That is the finding from the latest KLEMS India database, a research project supported by the Reserve Bank of...

-The Hindu Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...

-Down to Earth Experts say they have already submitted a document to the ICAR about adopting IFS in north-eastern states India needs to adopt a “well designed” integrated farming system (IFS) to realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to double farmers’ income by 2022, observed the scientists and agricultural experts at the ongoing 105th Indian Science Congress in Manipur today (March 19). “The IFS can enhance farmers’ income if we provide a...