-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Farmers protesting in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra demand better prices for their produce and loan waivers. But low prices and loans are not the real problems. These are mere symptoms of structural problems which cannot be solved by temporary measures such as a loan waiver. "While such turmoil appears to have immediate causes, their sources are rooted in problems that lie deeper," says Prakash Bakshi, a former...

-The Financial Express Pune: Prominent farm activist and current chairman of the special task force constituted by the government of Maharashtra on agrarian crisis, Kishore Tiwari, has urged CM Devendra Fadnavis to cover all the farmers of the 14 distressed districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada in the blanket loan waiver announced on Sunday without any conditions. Welcoming the loan waiver announced by the government, Tiwari said farmers in the distressed districts...

-The Indian Express Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar says Maharashtra is a huge state and there are ways to raise the funds Mumbai: The Maharashtra government will have to provide Rs 1.14 lakh crore to write off the entire loan burden of all 1.36 crore farmers in Maharashtra, stoking concerns given the state’s debt burden of Rs 4 lakh crore. Highly placed sources said the state budget for 2017-18 was Rs 2.57 lakh...

-Hindustan Times In Mandsaur, demonetisation has disrupted every aspect of the rural economy – land markets, credit networks, procurement, and crop prices. Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh): Traders rued their burnt shops, farmers mourned the death of their sons to police bullets; but as four days of violence drew to a close, both sides could only speak of one thing: demonetisation. “Notebandi destroyed the trust between farmer and trader,” said Sunil Ghatiya, a soybean trader...

-ENS Economic Bureau 'Such waiver would prove counter-productive for the RBI’s measures to clean up bank balance sheets' Mumbai: With Maharashtra also joining the farm loan waiver bandwagon, various state governments are expected to waive off $40 billion, or Rs 2,57,000 crore, of farmers’ loans in the run-up to the 2019 general elections in the country, a global banking group has said. Farm loan waivers will amount to 2 per cent of...