-Hindustan Times Lip service: Amarinder Singh sought votes on the promise of a waiver, but now faces heat as more than half the state’s farmers have been left out of the scheme. Bathinda: The weather-beaten face of Rajpal Singh shows signs of anxiety as he stands in one corner of his eight-acre farmland in Punjab’s Bathinda, surveying the standing wheat crop that is almost ready for harvest. Singh might get a reasonable price...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Unseen victims of farm distress -TV Jayan
-The Hindu Business Line Kota Neelima digs into farmer suicide cases to chronicle lives often labelled as collateral damage In last November, when All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella organisation of around 190 farmer groups from across the country, organised a Kisan Mukti Sansad in Delhi, there was one event that moved almost everyone of thousands present there. About two dozens children of those farmers who had committed suicide in...
More »'Either there wasn't an economist in Swaminathan panel, or he didn't know economics' -Swapna Merlin
-ThePrint.in Renowned agricultural economist Sardara Singh Johl takes on father of green revolution M.S. Swaminathan’s idea of raising MSP to 1.5 times the production costs. New Delhi: Renowned agricultural economist Sardara Singh Johl agrees with M.S. Swaminathan, the man credited as the father of the ‘green revolution’, on the futility of loan waivers to ease farm distress. But he disagrees with a much-touted recommendation of the committee on tackling the farm crisis Swaminathan...
More »Farmer debts: Relief, the Kerala way -Shriya Mohan
-The Hindu Business Line Eleven years since its inception, the State’s farmer’s debt relief commission has quietly eased the burden of debt on poor farmers, and grown to be a model worth emulating Earlier this week 35,000 debt-ridden farmers coursed through Maharashtra, walking 180 km on blistered soles, to converge at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan demanding freedom from debt and fair compensation for their produce. As the government scrounged for solutions, it could’ve...
More »Why are India's farmers committing suicide?
-IANS Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, fragmentation of land, unsuitability of seeds and inadequate sources of credit. Despite the democratically-elected governments that claim to represent a country where over half the population is dependent on farming, agriculture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farmers' lives. Remedies have been...
More »