-CaravanMagazine.in What the Modi economy has done to farmers On his way to the prime ministership in 2014, Narendra Modi promised that, if his Bharatiya Janata Party won power, the government would raise the minimum support prices paid for crops such as rice and wheat to guarantee farmers a 50-percent profit on their production costs. The benchmark was first proposed by the Swaminathan Commission, formed in 2004 to address farmers’ economic plight,...

-Hindustan Times The agrarian crisis is one of the factors that may have resulted in the BJP’s loss in three Hindi heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December, according to analysts, and the party clearly doesn’t want it to affect its prospects in the 2019 parliamentary elections. New Delhi: This financial year, 2018-19 could end up being the worst year for Farm incomes in almost two decades, government data...

-Counterview.net A letter, addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and prepared by senior activists led by Aruna Roy on behalf of the Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), and signed, among others, by 80 members of Parliament, has regretted that, despite repeated public statements by his government promising employment and job creation that will boost the country’s growth, the country’s only employment guarantee programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

-The Indian Express Lowering production costs, and a policy shift from ‘managing shortages’ to ‘handling surpluses’, is the way forward for Indian agriculture The government wants farmers’ incomes to double in five years by 2022. While a laudable objective, the reality today is that farmers are suffering stress, if not shrinkage, in their incomes. The demand for loan waivers, and political pressures to implement these, is only a reflection of this...

-The Economic Times With the general election a few months away, the central government has begun crunching the numbers in preparation for a comprehensive programme to help farmers tide over challenges posed by a dip in prices and dwindling incomes. The government is keen on a more substantive intervention than a loan waiver at the central level to alleviate agrarian distress besides stepping up investments in the sector, having concluded that writing...