-PTI The Union Cabinet is expected to soon approve a relief package for farmers grappling with falling prices of their crops and to tackle distress in the farm sector, according to sources. The likely relief package is seen as an attempt to assuage the farming community’s discontent ahead of the general elections. “...The Agriculture Ministry’s proposal on addressing income deficit syndrome of small and marginal farmers is on the agenda (at the Cabinet...

-CaravanMagazine.in What the Modi economy has done to farmers On his way to the prime ministership in 2014, Narendra Modi promised that, if his Bharatiya Janata Party won power, the government would raise the minimum support prices paid for crops such as rice and wheat to guarantee farmers a 50-percent profit on their production costs. The benchmark was first proposed by the Swaminathan Commission, formed in 2004 to address farmers’ economic plight,...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...

-Down to Earth The circular economy of cattle has ruptured, threatening livelihoods of India’s poorest. The value output of the livestock economy is Rs 9.18 lakh crore, managed mostly by small and marginal farmers It is almost a year since Rahamdin Khan hasn’t got any good sleep. A resident of Khoabas, a bucolic village of 500 households at the foothills of Aravalli mountain range in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, Rahamdin witnessed a cruel...