-The Hindu Business Line The decline in share of cooperatives in total farm credit is a cause for concern and needs to be corrected, says Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog . An agriculture expert and a full-time member of the Aayog, Chand believes that financial inclusion in the sector has three dimensions – geographical distribution of farm credit, more long-term credit, and larger role of cooperatives. In an interaction with BusinessLine, Chand...

-Hindustan Times Three years ago, when representatives from Sukhbir Agro approached farmers in Punjab proposing they sell their farm waste to the company to generate bio-energy, no one believed them. “They proposed to buy our waste… We didn’t believe them,” said Amolak Singh, a farmer. However, as the farmers slowly came around to the idea the green benefits of this move became apparent. Every November, farmers in the northern states of Punjab, Haryana and...

-IPS News GUNTUR, India: Thirty-seven-year-old Kode Sujatha stands in front of a hut with a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by a group of men shouting angrily and jostling one another for a spot at the front of the crowd. Each of the boatmen, who carry sand mined from a nearby river to the shore every day, wants to be paid before the others.   Sujatha stares hard at them, holds up a piece of paper...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation and a mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threaten to take over, even as the West looks East for better concepts of sustainable living. Analysing today's crisis in the handloom sector, plagued by low-cost imitations from power looms,...

-IANS Bhubaneswar: Odisha will empower tribal women through diary cooperatives so that they get opportunities to earn more, an official said on Wednesday. State-run dairy cooperative Orissa State Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation Limited (OMFED) has received Rs.46.45 crore from the union tribal affairs ministry to implement this, OMFED chairman Bishnupada Sethi said. Tribal women play a significant role in animal husbandry. Women constitute 70 percent of the labour force in livestock farming, while...