-The Business Standard     They were unimpressed by the UPA's misguided socialism, but they worry about the new regime's free-market orientation too Consider this paradox. The Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was decimated in the elections in spite of several years of good monsoon and rising agricultural production. Consider another paradox. This was the regime that implemented policies that were presumed to be pro-farmer: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the...

-One World South Asia   Policy Analyst Devinder Sharma strongly advocates that the income a farmer earns in India should be de-linked from the price that his crops fetch in the market. New Delhi: Indian agriculture is faced with a terrible agrarian crisis. It is a crisis primarily of sustainability and economic viability. The spate of farmer suicide and the willingness of farmers to quit agriculture if given a choice is a stark...

-The Business Standard   Agriculture ministry wants review of clamps on holdings; rural development ministry seeks centralisation of records With Narendra Modi set to take over as prime minister in the next few days, the department of agriculture is proposing a comprehensive review of land ceiling laws as a first major reform in the sector.   Land also figures in the to-do list of the rural development ministry. It has proposed centralisation of land records...

-Financial Chronicle   Forecasts on possible monsoon behaviour are not very encouraging. There is a possibility of El Nino factors causing further problems. More recently, our farmers in parts of north and central India experienced the fury of hailstorms and heavy rains. Climate change further complicates the possibility of providing accurate advance estimates of monsoon behaviour. This is not only true in our country, but also around the world. California, for example,...

-The Indian Express   Pune (Maharashtra): Agriculture dept says the ‘first-of-its-kind' portal will have real-time information on area under fruits, vegetables, flowers and spices. In a move aimed to help planners and agriculturists, the Commissionerate of Agriculture is putting final touches to a web portal that will track the production of fruits and vegetables in the state. Claimed to be first of its kind, the portal will have real-time information about the area...