-Hindustan Times The agrarian crisis is one of the factors that may have resulted in the BJP’s loss in three Hindi heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December, according to analysts, and the party clearly doesn’t want it to affect its prospects in the 2019 parliamentary elections. New Delhi: This financial year, 2018-19 could end up being the worst year for farm incomes in almost two decades, government data...

-The Hindu India has the technological capacity, the financial resources, and the need for a simple, transparent basic income scheme In 2010-2013, I was principal designer of three basic income pilots in West Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, in which over 6,000 men, women and children were provided with modest basic incomes, paid in cash, monthly, without conditions. The money was not much, coming to about a third of subsistence. But it was...

-Down to Earth The increasing trend of legal penalty for abandonment will backfire Bruised by anti-cow slaughter laws and widespread vigilantism, farmers simply don’t want cows around. This means tactical abandoning, with decreasing options to trade unproductive cattle. But several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, have formed laws to penalise such abandonment too. Stray cattle has become a menace in villages as well as towns in several areas, to...

-Financial Express Forget the fanfare about the PM-AASHA scheme that is designed to lend greater price support to farmers, procurement of pulses and oilseeds by the public sector is likely to drop by more than a third in the kharif 2018 season from the year-ago period. The decline in procurement comes after two consecutive kharif seasons in which it surged and reached a critical mass, compared with very small quantities earlier. Just...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...