-India Infoline News Service   Mumbai: Efforts at the central and state government level to improve rural infrastructure, food distribution and non-agricultural employment opportunities are credit positive because, if sustained, they are likely to lower the credit challenges that India's vulnerability to drought poses. Moody's Investor's Service says that although India (Baa3 positive) may avoid drought this year, its economy remains vulnerable to future droughts or fluctuations in rainfall, and its sovereign credit...

-Hindustan Times India’s June-September monsoon has been deficient so far and quite uneven in its spread, with the rain-bearing system entering a phase that will largely determine whether the country can escape a drought for the first time in six years.   Overall, rains have been 9% lower than normal, with sharper deficits in some areas. Rainfall during August-September, the remaining two months of the rainy season, would be poor at 84%, the...

-Huffington Post NEW DELHI - A searing El Nino was to have sucked the rains out of India, but meteorologists here can't explain why is it raining so much. Rains in north-west India are, as of 21st July, eight percent more than what the region usually gets between June 1 --the onset of the monsoon--and late July. Moreover the latest forecast from both state and private meteorologists is that beginning this week,...

-Deccan Herald Many of India's agricultural practices have barely changed in decades. Reform is long overdue. Nearly a quarter of a century after India launched its first big liberalising reforms in 1991, setting off a new spurt of growth, one area of the country’s economy remains hardly touched: farming. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a 24-hour, state-run television channel for farmers in May, but has fostered no public debate about how to improve...

-The Hindu Business Line Though the overall price trend is declining, for many items of daily consumption, especially food, it has risen Wholesale and consumer price indices are trending lower, but this has not brought relief to the common man. In May, the wholesale price index recorded negative growth for the seventh consecutive month. The consumer price index edged marginally higher in May to 5.01 per cent, from 4.87 per cent a...