-Hindustan Times Sharmilla Dar, a government schoolteacher in east Delhi, is irritated about a sudden surge in vegetable prices in the last week after they had cooled considerably since a year ago. "Why can't the government keep things affordable?" she asks. For middle-class consumers, food inflation worries are creeping back in. The farm sector is hurting badly after a full year of unprecedented weather havocs - from a partial drought last summer...

-The Financial Express In a column in The Financial Express, ("Time to tweak priority-sector lending", goo.gl/6O8AOL, February 6), the author made a case for "tweaking" priority-sector lending (PSL) norms which largely stipulate that the commercial banks direct credit towards certain vulnerable sectors and target population. Specifically, the article argued for revisiting the sectoral targets and cited a reduction in the share of agriculture sector in GDP as a valid reason...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In a landmark judgment, the Bombay high court has paved the way for the state to pay higher compensation to farmers whose land it acquires for public projects. The court held that financial constraints or project cost escalations cannot be a reason to shortchange farmers and set aside a government decision to fix a multiplier factor of 1.1 on market rates even though the law says...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...

-The New Indian Express For now the storm is over. Untimely monsoons, which create much havoc for farmers, became a parliamentary allegory with the Congress raining on Modi's parade over the Land Bill. In spite of all the manoeuvring that will follow, clouds threaten to hang low over the next session too. This is indicated in Sonia Gandhi's decision to take to the streets in protest - a leaf taken from...