-The Telegraph Since 2007, the Bay of Bengal basin has seen at least 15 major cyclones, including Sidr in 2007, Aila in 2009, Phailin in 2013, Hudhud in 2014, Bulbul in 2019 and Amphan this year. Amphan made landfall in the Sunderbans, home to five million people, on May 20. More than 13.2 billion dollars worth of property was destroyed and more than 500,000 people left homeless. An Unesco heritage site,...

-Down to Earth Instead of putting Punjab farmers at the mercy of big corporates and private players, there is a need to strengthen existing infrastructure The Union government announced three agriculture-related ordinances as part of its novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package — permitting agricultural trade outside the boundaries of market committees, easing regulation and control under the Essential Commodities Act and facilitating contract farming. Out of these, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and...

-CaravanMagazine.in On 30 May, the dominant caste landowners of Ghanauri Khurd village in Punjab’s Sangrur district organised a meeting of their panchayat. Under the supervision of Rajdeep Kaur, the sarpanch of the village, they passed a list of resolutions against the wages, welfare and freedom of the primarily Dalit daily-wage labourers of the village. The resolution capped the wages of workers at Rs 3,800 for sowing an acre of paddy and...

-TheWire.in The text of the ordinances raises some questions about their stated objective to ‘free up’ curbs on trade and help farmers get a remunerative price for their crop. Recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government introduced three ordinances to bring in far-reaching agricultural ‘reforms’ in the country. Taken together, these ordinances intend to liberalise the regulatory system in the agriculture sector, provide freedom to farmers and traders to trade in farm...

-The Hindu Food security and farmer welfare are intertwined It is ironic that it took a devastating pandemic to force the government’s hand for long-overdue Agrarian reforms. Amendments have been made to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. The Finance Minister has urged States to dismantle the Agricultural Produce Market Committees. Several long-term changes have been made to the agricultural sector, such as fair pricing and e-trading, along with liquidity measures. The Centre...