-ThePrint.in Farmers’ issues have occupied centre stage after decades and compulsions of 2019 can create the political will to do something. When Raghuram Rajan opposes farm loan waivers, he ought to be taken seriously. Not just because he has the academic and policy credentials to talk about banking. Not just because he is backed by twelve other well-known economists. And, not just because he had the guts, as the RBI governor, to...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Joining the debate on farm loan waivers, government think-tank Niti Aayog on Wednesday said such a move helps only a fraction of Farmers and is no solution to mitigate agrarian distress. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has been pressing the government on the issue, saying he will not let Prime Minister Narendra Modi sleep until a loan waiver is given to all Farmers. "Farm loan waiver is not a solution...

-Livemint.com Panel on doubling farm incomes proposes shifting from supply-led to demand-led production system New Delhi: The government should undertake a radical overhaul of the agriculture ecosystem by moving from a supply-push production system to a demand-led one, according to a committee set up by the centre to recommend strategies to double Farmer incomes by 2022. The agriculture ministry should also set up an “empowered committee” to operationalize and monitor progress of doubling...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...

-Down to Earth While other states had declared drought months ago, Gujarat govt kept calling it a “scarcity of water” While other states like Karnataka, Maharshtra, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh had declared drought at the very offset of the southwest monsoon, and began work on mitigation measures, the Gujarat government remained silent despite receiving deficit rainfall in most of the districts. Until yesterday, the Gujarat government had been terming the situation...