-Livemint.com New government data show India saw fewer cases of farmers taking their lives in 2018 than the year before. But this doesn’t mean rural distress is down. Much needs to be done It is tempting to relate the decline in the number of farmer suicides in 2018, as reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), to an abatement in rural distress. Such a temptation should, however, be tempered. There have...
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Who is a farmer? Government has no clear definition -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Such an ambiguity has serious implications for the design and beneficiaries of schemes meant to help them Who is a farmer? What is the government’s definition of a farmer and how many farmers are there in India by that definition? Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar failed to answer that question when it was asked in Parliament last week. The government’s ambiguity has serious implications for the design and beneficiaries of the...
More »Give farmers their due credit -Ashok Gulati & Ritika Juneja
-The Indian Express All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards. This will ensure that farmers do not use the loans for non-agricultural purposes. Normally, a sector’s credit off-take is a sign of its health. Higher the off-take, the better the sector’s performance. There has been a healthy off-take of ground-level credit (GLC) in agriculture and allied sectors. In the financial year (FY) 2018-19, banks disbursed Rs 12.55 trillion...
More »It's time to move away from paddy-wheat cropping cycle to end air pollution
Air quality in North India in general and Delhi National Capital Region (Delhi NCR) in particular plunged to its lowest point in recent years during October-November thanks to a variety of factors. Through media reports one comes to know that stubble burning (also called paddy straw burning/ crop residue burning) is chiefly responsible for the public health crisis in India's capital and its nearby regions. Data accessed from the website...
More »Market incentives, direct income support for farmers are far more effective in increasing agricultural productivity -Ashok Gulati & Sakshi Gupta
-The Indian Express India can learn three lessons from China — investing more in agri-R&D and innovations, improving incentives for farmers by carrying out agri-marketing reforms, and collapsing input subsidies into direct income support on per hectare basis. India and China, the world’s most populous countries, have limited arable land — China has about 120 million hectares (mha) and India 156 mha. The challenge before the two countries is to produce...
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