-DNA Broken promises apart, a regular income for farmers is extremely essential There is trouble on the farm front. With untimely rains accompanied by hailstorms and strong winds showing no signs of relenting, further deepening the prevailing agrarian crisis; and with the spate of farmer suicides on the rise, agriculture faces its worst-ever crisis. While the rising number of farmer suicides is only a reflection of how fragile the agrarian economy...

-Frontline   The BJP-led NDA government has, in the two Budgets it has presented so far, revealed itself to be very different from the pro-farmer image that its leading election campaigner and now Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, projected. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha election states: "Agriculture is the engine of India's economic growth and the largest employer, and BJP commits highest priority to agriculture growth, increases in...

-FirstPost.com Raipur: Amid Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aggressive pitch for growth and denouncement of the policy of handouts in the pre-general election campaign last year, Chhattisgarh's model of Public Distribution System (PDS) stood out as a shining and welcome misfit. The BJP showcased Chief Minister Raman Singh model of PDS as its answer to the Congress' Food Security Act. Besides the Gujarat model, this was the only model that found mention...

-PTI Chandigarh: Punjab government on Friday asked the Centre to reconsider its decision of stopping foodgrain procurement by FCI from Punjab, saying it will prove to be "very harmful" for the farming community and could lead to "distress selling". "The Centre's move of stopping procurement of foodgrain from states like Punjab could prove to be very harmful for state growers as they could be denied of appropriate prices of their crop (in...

-The Financial Express The government has decided to dispense with "levy rice", a mandatory system under which rice millers also undertake rice procurement for the public distribution system by buying paddy directly from the farmers, effective the next marketing season starting October. The system, introduced way back in 1978, is set to be withdrawn as the government felt that a lack of effective supervision often allowed the millers to avoid paying minimum...