-The Indian Express Farmers protested violently over the weekend in support of their demand for a one-time payment of the Fair and remunerative price. Ballooning cane dues could become a major issue as LS polls near. Pune: Sugarcane farmers in western Maharashtra Monday called off their violent four-day-old agitation, giving sugar mill owners and the government two weeks to find the money to pay them their full dues. The agreement was...
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P Sainath, acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People's Archive of Rural India, interviewed by Anuradha SenGupta (News18.com)
-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...
More »MSP was not 1.5 times the cost of production for most kharif crops during the last 6 agricultural years
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...
More »Deflation in WPI of 8 kharif crops observed during 2016-17 to 2018-19, while their MSPs grew at a positive rate
It is being said by economists that unlike the issue of low food production that gripped Indian agriculture for long in the past, the present problem is about farmers not getting remunerative prices against the crops that they are growing. According to farmer leaders, the policymakers are too late to realise that bitter truth. As a result, there is a growing disenchantment in the rural hinterland against the ruling government...
More »Agrarian distress: Income support to farmers better option than loan waivers -Soumya Kanti Ghosh
-Financial Express Income support for farm households may be a worse solution than freeing up agri trade and marketing, but it should work much better than loan waivers. When the new MSP regime was implemented in July, one of the common fears in the market was that the hikes would stoke inflation fears. Four months down the line, not only does this fear seems to have subsided, but serious concerns are now...
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