-Financial Express It is the season of promising freebies to lure voters. Congress leads in these promises. It has promised a loan waiver in Chhattisgarh within 10 days of coming to power; and the hiking of minimum support price (MSP) of paddy to Rs 2,500/quintal, up from Rs 1,750/quintal, a 43% raise over the already increased MSP of paddy. In Madhya Pradesh, it has promised a loan waiver of up to...
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Perils of over promising -Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express Manifesto pledges to raise farmers’ incomes and increase MSPs take away focus from the structural reforms that are urgently required. It is a season of promising freebies to lure voters. The Congress leads in making these promises. The party has promised to waive farmers’ loans in Chhattisgarh within 10 days if it is voted to office. It has also promised a hike in minimum support price (MSP) of...
More »Paddy yield down 15%, small farmers on the brink in Punjab -Perneet Singh & Parvesh Sharma
-The TribuneDebt trap worsens; Govt must step in, says BKU leaderMansa/ Sangrur: With paddy production recording a decline of 10 to 15 per cent owing to untimely rains, small and Marginal Farmers are staring at misery, clueless as to how they will repay debts.Farmers owning less than 5 acres of land and those cultivating land on lease are torn between meeting the needs of their families and repaying outstanding debts,...
More »Eco-friendly farmers in 'model' Punjab village don't burn crop stubble, plough it back to soil -Manish Sirhindi
-The Times of India PATIALA: When smoke from burning paddy stubble was choking Delhi last year, one small village near Nabha in Punjab was doing its bit to keep the air clean. Not a straw was burnt in Kalar Majra, where 60 families farm about 700 acres. “The government chose our village as a model, and gave all the machinery needed to manage the crop residue,” says Bir Dalvinder Singh, a Kalar...
More »Indian agriculture's problem of scale
-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and Marginal Farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...
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