-Down to Earth The new government has to focus on the rural population, their aspirations and the economy By this time most of us know Sunaina Rawat. Still a brief introduction: she is a 12-year-old girl from a village in Uttar Pradesh. When the news channel NDTV’s head Prannoy Roy interviewed her on life and aspirations while covering elections, she immediately became one of the most imposing symbol for the country’s rural...

-TheNewsMinute.com Set up in 2017, Kisan Mitra provides counselling to distressed farmers and acts as a bridge between them and the government. “It was during the 2018 floods that we got a call from a farmer in Adilabad. The caller didn’t need any help for himself but said that his neighbour has been sitting in a corner of his field since morning with a bottle of pesticide in his hand. The...

-Newsclick.in Northern Maharashtra, which produces almost 60% of India’s total onion crop, has seen a steady fall in onion rates creating a crisis for the farmers in the drought affected state. Two months back, NewsClick reported the suicide of a 22-year-old boy whose onion crop had failed. This Akshay Tambe was from Bhoom tehsil of Marathwada, an area which is actually not known for onion cultivation. But the heart wrenching stories of...

-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-Newsclick.in In an interview, the ‘father’ of India’s Green Revolution, says while technology is necessary, policies on procurement and public distribution are far more important in making agriculture economically viable and sustainable in the country. No one has played a more instrumental role in India’s self-sufficiency in food production than Dr MS Swaminathan — world-renowned agricultural scientist, known as the ‘Father of Green Revolution in India’. After getting a PhD from Cambridge...