-The Hindu Unable to sustain their primary occupation, many are said to have begun migrating to cities to work as daily-wage labourers COIMBATORE: KM Ramagoundar, president of the Tamizhaga Vivasayigal Sangam and a farmer based out of Karugur, about 25 km from Krishnagiri, is a frustrated man these days. “Even the so-called big farmers, who own five or six acres, have started going to Bengaluru, where they are working as daily-wage labourers. This...

-The Hindu Agrarian crisis has not dimmed Prime Minister Modi’s appeal The sugarcane farmers gathered around a tree-shaded charpoy at Bhainswala village, a few kilometres from Shamli town in western Uttar Pradesh, share a common litany of woes — late payments, high input costs, the stray cattle menace — for which most blame the policies of the BJP government. But when the discussion veers around to the Lok Sabha election, pandemonium breaks out...

-The Economic Times Vidarbha has over 20% of the state’s population and is the land of perennial agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Ten Lok Sabha seats are up for grabs in Vidarbha. In 2014, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine delivered a body blow to this Congress base (with NCP fighting separately then) by sweeping all the 10 seats. The BJP won 44 of the 62 assembly segments of the region without an alliance...

-The Hindu It is tragic that ‘New India’ chooses to attack Adivasis and forest-dwellers instead of those destroying its ecology When the tsunami hit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2004, thousands perished. However, some of the oldest Adivasi tribes, the Jarawas and the Onges, lost nobody. These communities followed animals to the highlands well before the waves hit. Formal education was of little survival value in a context where you needed...

-Firstpost.com Rajasthan’s relationship with summer is not a pleasant one. The shortage of water in the region only adds to the misery of the people. Even before the onset of summer, over 5,000 villages in nine districts in Rajasthan — Barmer, Churu, Pali, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jalore, Jodhpur, Hanumangarh and Nagaur were declared ‘drought-affected’ by the state government. The drought in this area affects the economy of the region as employment options...