-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: The three-day Kisan Swaraj Sammelan, which concluded here on Sunday, has called for an income guarantee scheme for farmers. The meeting, attended by farmers’ representatives and non-governmental organisations, from 25 States in the country, demanded that the Union government must bring out an Act to ensure minimum incomes for farmers. In a declaration announced at the end of the three day convention, the conference called for enactment...

The budgetary support to interest subvention scheme has increased by almost 14 times between 2006-07 and 2016-17. However, the much-touted subsidised short-term credit scheme provides little help to the small and marginal farmers, apart from tenant farmers. According to the Committee on Medium-term Path on Financial Inclusion, which submitted its report in December 2015, the interest subvention scheme suffers from 3 types of defects: i. Subsidised credit may not be...

-International Business Times Bone-dry India’s water crisis seems to bringing the 2015 blockbuster film “Mad Max” to life. Apart from a deteriorating quality of life, countless diseases and loss of economic opportunities, India’s lack of water is also causing a plethora of social ills. Two successive years of droughts have resulted in India’s water crisis worsening by the minute, with a whopping 75.8 million Indians -- five percent of the country’s population...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-The Hindu If we run out of groundwater, millions of people will be left without any means to sustain themselves The protest by farmers in Chikballapur recently, over the scarcity of drinking water, received extensive news coverage as it halted Bengaluru in its tracks after key highways were blocked. Interestingly, very little of that coverage was devoted to the groundwater crisis that underpins the problem in such regions. Groundwater plays an important role...