A farmer died of broken heart over meagre assistance that he got from the government for the crop loss he suffered two years ago. Venna Peddaseshi Reddy (50) of Peddagarlapadu village, 15 km away from here, raised paddy, cotton and red chilli on two acres of his own land and two more acres on lease as a tenant. He lost all the three crops due to the rains in October and...

Stunned villagers are finding that governments have been leasing land, often for decades. The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave. “They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured a delegation of TDP-Left parties combine that he would look into the issue of alleged suicide by farmers in Andhra Pradesh who were severely affected in the unprecedented rains and cyclonic storm in the last few months in the State. The delegation highlighted the plight of farmers who were hit as their produce like paddy, cotton, tobacco, red gram, chillies and oil seeds were damaged/discoloured...

Police arrested a top opposition leader in a southern Indian state and forcibly took him to hospital on Monday as his condition deteriorated on the fourth day of an indefinite fast to demand compensation for farmers. Telugu Desam regional party leader Chandrababu Naidu wants the Andhra Pradesh state government to pay a higher rate of compensation to thousands of farmers whose crops have been devastated by recent heavy monsoon rains and...

If present political trends and shifts in Andhra Pradesh intensify, the State could see an election within a year. And not just over Telangana. When Chandrababu Naidu sits on a hunger fast for suffering farmers, you know something is afoot in Andhra Pradesh. Excessive rains have devastated the crops in the State. And losses have been enormous. But a farmer losing over Rs.15,000 on an acre of paddy will get less...