-TheWire.in While suicides and shock deaths have seen a sudden spike in Tamil Nadu’s Cauvery delta region, the government does not believe the drought is the cause and is continuing to direct water away from rural areas. From the banks of the Kollidam river, S. Selvaraju’s farm is barely a mile away. The huge river, actually a tributary of the Cauvery that drains its surplus water into the sea, runs along the village...

-The Indian Express Agriculture cannot survive without them. But they are invisible in the current conversation on the agrarian crisis An ex-company executive-cum-economist turns to the anchor during a discussion on the farmers’ agitation. “Overpopulation is destroying the farming activity. There are simply too many mouths to feed and the farms are shrinking. We must look to the urban areas for creating new jobs,” he says. The man at the local paan...

-Livemint.com Forgiving farm loans is no solution. The data shows there’s a far more fundamental problem—most agricultural households are unable to keep body and soul together. There’s nothing new about rural distress. Nor is it surprising. If the income of almost 70% of farm households is less than their consumption expenditure, according to the government’s own data, then it’s obvious they’ll be “distressed”. Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion from the National Sample...

-The Hindu Business line Distressed farmers are demanding loan waivers, but that should not deflect focus from what needs to be done and undone to address the root cause of the agrarian crisis The farmers’ unrest across the country, and particularly across several BJP-ruled States, appears to have caught the central government by surprise. But it should really not have done so. Ever since candidate Narendra Modi in 2014 promised the farmers...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Speedbreakers probably take more lives in India than they save. Road transport ministry data reveals that these 'safeguards' are the cause of 30 crashes daily, killing at least nine people a day. That's the average for two years since the government started collecting data on speedbreakers in 2014. Last year's figures are yet to be published, but government sources say they are likely to be similar. In...