-The Times of India   JAIPUR: Babu Bhai, a sahariya adivasi in his 50s, spent 24 years of his life as a bonded labourer at Umrao Singh's farm at Chainpura in Kishanganj, Baran district. His father had died when he took a loan of Rs 3,000 and that led to his bondage with no reprieve. When his brother died, Umrao Singh did not let him attend his brother's funeral as he had...

-The Hindu   A welter of problems may be in store for the country These are testing times for the Narendra Modi government in the farm and food sector: the south-west (June-September) monsoon is delayed, deficient and weak; kharif sowing, much of which is rain-fed, is lagging by over 17 per cent over last year; rising food prices are pushing up inflation and pulling down growth. Right now the prices of only perishable...

-The Hindu Business Line   Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change the more they remain the same ): A French proverb. In its earnest to tackle rising food inflation the new Government has taken a welcome initiative to delist fruits/ vegetables including onions (FVO) from the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, while all other measures are as usual - short term of political expediency, repeated several...

-Mail Today     India is staring at the spectre of a possible drought as the progress of the monsoon has been abysmally slow, with authorities saying cumulative rainfall across the country has been 45 per cent below the average for this period. Reason: the El Nino effect is adversely affecting this year's monsoon, say weather experts. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), in its latest report, has highlighted the weak and delayed onset of...

-The Business Standard   How a law to conserve groundwater led to a better paid and better organised migrant workforce Ludhiana: For some years now, Punjab's fields have lain fallow through the searing dry heat of May; but come June's steamy humidity, small bands of lithe, slender men from Bihar fan out across the waterlogged paddy fields, transplanting rice saplings with fluid efficiency. Bihar's paddy planters have frequented Punjab since the 1960s when rice...