-Hindustan Times Bhopal: In a 1957 Bollywood classic Naya Daur, man battles machine and prevails. But in the canal irrigated areas of Madhya Pradesh, manual labourers are losing to a combine harvester, a rapid harvesting machine. Combine harvesters that first made their appearance in the 1960s turned out to be more economical and efficient ways of harvesting crops and then on they began to challenge the manual labour. Now the situation has come...

-The Hindu Business Line The Congress law and the BJP's amended version both fail to address the lack of transparency in property deals A toxic mix of hypocrisy, amnesia, opportunism, ignorance, and paternalism has led to a mess on the land acquisition legislation. It seems certain that whatever law we end up with is going to be bad law. It will not serve the primary purpose of any eminent domain law -...

-Hindustan Times Jhabua/Alirajpur: The poor tribal farmers ploughing the rocky surface of steep hillocks at a height of more than 700 feet in western Madhya Pradesh belie the state government's claims about making agriculture a profitable profession. Overcoming problems posed by the undulating terrain, rocks located barely six inches below the surface and the lack of irrigation facilities, the tribes people eke out a livelihood by growing maize, millet, urad, tuar and...

-The Hindu The parliamentary stand off over the Indian government's effort to ease procedures to acquire land for "public purposes" continues, with the government deciding to re-promulgate the ordinance amending the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. Besides concern about the impact that this would have on the farming community and those dependent on it, another cause for the controversy is the...

-Frontline   The BJP-led NDA government has, in the two Budgets it has presented so far, revealed itself to be very different from the pro-farmer image that its leading election campaigner and now Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, projected. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha election states: "Agriculture is the engine of India's economic growth and the largest employer, and BJP commits highest priority to agriculture growth, increases in...