-TheWire.in In 2016-17, pending payments under the employment scheme in the state amounted to a whopping Rs 5,571 crore. Tiravur, Tamil Nadu: “I could kill someone,” said Janaki Chinarasu in early June at her home in Tiruvarur, protecting her forehead from the heat with her hands askew. “It’s like the sun god has conspired with the rain god to punish us.” Chinarasu is a frail, strong-witted woman with a five-year-old on her lap...
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Drought and now pest attacks: Double danger stalks Odisha's rice fields, its farming mainstay -Priya Ranjan Sahu
-Scroll.in A severe shortage of government-distributed pesticides aggravated the crop loss from attacks by brown planthoppers. A twin calamity has struck farmers in Odisha in recent weeks. A moderate to severe drought has affected paddy crops on more than 3.1 lakh hectares of land in over 6,000 villages across 15 districts. In addition, an attack by brown planthoppers – insects that feed on rice plants – has destroyed paddy fields on...
More »Loan waiver is not the solution -Anjani Kumar and Seema Bathla
-The Hindu We need to revisit the credit policy with a focus on the outreach of banks and financial inclusion Since Independence, one of the primary objectives of India’s agricultural policy has been to improve farmers’ access to institutional credit and reduce their dependence on informal credit. As informal sources of credit are mostly usurious, the government has improved the flow of adequate credit through the nationalisation of commercial banks, and the...
More »Gujarat farmers unlikely to benefit from sops doled out by State govt -Rajalakshmi Nirmal
-The Hindu Business Line Costs, prices, credit issues are a challenge, just as in other States Ahead of the Assembly elections, the Gujarat government has announced a slew of measures to woo rural voters. This includes waiver of GST on equipment used in micro-irrigation, 0 interest on loans up to ?3 lakh for farmers, and a bonus of ?500 per quintal on cotton. But these sops are not likely to make farmers in...
More »Harprit Kaur, head of the Psychology Department in Punjabi University, interviewed by Meenakshi Sushma (Down to Earth)
-Down to Earth A new study is focusing on identifying vulnerable farmers in Punjab, Maharashtra and Telangana, the three states that experience high rate of suicide In India, farmer suicide is an issue that has been talked about widely. The cases of farmers’ suicide rose by 42 per cent between 2014 and 2015. In 2015, one farmer committed suicide every hour. The latest report of the National Crime Bureau (NCB) shows that...
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