-The Hindu Business Line Price incentives for farmers should be followed up by better marketing infrastructure The Centre, while announcing the minimum support prices for the oncoming rabi season, has stuck to its policy of announcing moderate increases in the case of cereals, while promoting a shift towards pulses and oilseeds. MSP increases have moderated after 2013, after double-digit spurts that were the norm in the preceding four years. Hence, the rise...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ajay Dandekar (ajay.dandekar@snu.edu.in) is a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University. Sreedeep Bhattacharya (sb514@snu.edu.in) is a fellow at the Centre of Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University. A study in two districts recording high numbers of farmer suicide—Yavatmal in Maharashtra and Sangrur in Punjab—explores the tipping point for this desperate act and finds that in addition to the shame of...

-Livemint.com The RBI-commissioned study listed faulty crop choices and aspirational consumption patterns as other major factors for farmer suicides New Delhi: Shame arising out of inability to repay loans taken from relatives and acquaintances is a key reason for farmers resorting to suicide, a study commissioned by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found. The study titled “Lives in debt: narratives of agrarian distress and farmer suicides”, conducted by researchers at Shiv Nadar...

-The Indian Express Punjab farmers seek to move away from paddy-wheat, but not the way policymakers want it Jalandhar: Crop diversification and moving away from the entrenched paddy-wheat cycle has been the buzzword among Punjab’s policymakers for at least two decades now. It will remain so even when the next government takes over in a couple of weeks’ time. But on the ground, farmers are still planting paddy during kharif and wheat...

-Business Today If you want to really get smart with water, the first thing you should realise is that in most parts of India, water is abundantly available. But you also need to recall what a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had once said: "There is enough in this world for everyone's need, but not for anyone's greed". Today, what Gandhiji advised is being termed a "paradigm shift" in water management. The...