-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...

-DNA Only 17% rural households take loans from financial institutions | Caste affiliation, gender play a part in getting credit As many as 31% of rural households in India are indebted and a significant number still depend on money-lenders, paying heavy interests, despite various government schemes and a network of rural banking. A parliamentary panel that probed the state of rural, agricultural banking found that a mere 17% rural household had taken...

-Livemint.com Overall foodgrain output, however, rose marginally to 252.22 mt in FY16, farm ministry’s advance estimates show New Delhi: The crippling drought over the past year failed to impact India’s overall foodgrain production but led to the lowest production of pulses in six years, showed the fourth advance estimates released by the agriculture ministry on Tuesday. In fact, according to the ministry, foodgrain production rose marginally—from 252.02 million tonnes (mt) in 2014-15 to 252.22...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: In chasing higher and higher GDP growth rates, India tends to gloss over two vital facts. One, farm growth cuts poverty twice as fast as industrial growth. Two, a 1% rise in agricultural output raises industrial production by 0.5% and national income by 0.7%, according to one calculation. In other words, the country’s fortunes are structurally tied to its farmers. Two-thirds of Indians rely on a farm-based income....