-IPS News GUNTUR, India: Thirty-seven-year-old Kode Sujatha stands in front of a hut with a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by a group of men shouting angrily and jostling one another for a spot at the front of the crowd. Each of the boatmen, who carry sand mined from a nearby river to the shore every day, wants to be paid before the others. Sujatha stares hard at them, holds up a piece of paper...
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The spectre of suicide -V Sridhar
-Frontline As rural Karnataka reels under an unprecedented wave of suicides by farmers, the State administration looks on, unwilling to address the reasons that have rendered rural livelihoods fragile. DEATH stalks rural Karnataka. In the 41 days between July 1 and August 10, as many as 245 farmers committed suicide, an average of six a day; since April 1, 284 farmers have taken their lives. As a bewildered State government gropes...
More »Properly used, Jan Dhan Yojna could lessen farmers' suicides
-Hindustan Times For a country that is set to be ranked among the world’s top five economies over the next decade, India cannot afford to be counted as a home for impoverished farmers who are ending their lives because they do not have the money to return loans as small as Rs 10,000. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 5,650 farmers committed suicide in India last year. Bankruptcy and...
More »Insurance scheme for farming sector on the anvil: Jaitley
-PTI Amritsar: "In the coming time, we have plans to spend Rs 50,000 crore on farming and irrigation sectors in the country." Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the Centre was planning to spend Rs 50,000 crore on the farming and irrigation sector and plans were also afoot to roll out an insurance scheme exclusively for the farming sector to compensate for crop loss. Admitting that the condition of farmers is...
More »In a first, Solapur decides to give up on sugarcane cultivation -Ketaki Ghoge
-Hindustan Times Mumbai: For a state considered the sugar bowl of the country and home to generations of politically heavyweight co-operative doyens, this is a sign of changing times. The drought-prone Solapur district in western Maharashtra, which has the highest number of sugar factories in the state (33), has finally decided to put a stop to cultivation of the water-guzzling sugarcane crop, with its collector saying the area under cultivation for the...
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