-Scroll.in In a harvest-less January, the state's farming community can only count its losses. We’re here to ensure the well-being of Tamil Nadu’s farmers. That refrain was heard repeatedly last week as protestors across the state demanded that the ban on the bull-taming sport of jallikattu. The exertions through which the bulls were put, allowed farmers to identify the most virile animals, the argument went, and was vital for ensuring the survival...

-The Indian Express Protests by the people against inequality are producing governments that move exactly in the opposite direction We all know that the world is an unequal place, both across and within countries. We also know that across the world, people are expressing their anger and disgust at this inequality. This is increasingly revealed in extreme and often paradoxical political results. In the US, a vote against the establishment has just...

-Hindustan Times Hamirgarh/ Dhanaula/ Chandigarh: Gurpreet Singh and Sandeep Duggal have more than 350 friends on Facebook. At 19, Gurpreet’s profile clearly gravitates to pictures of youth – astride an Enfield motorcycle, one with a friend in the corridors of a college, and the quintessential selfie with sunglasses. Duggal’s is more subdued. In a black-and-white profile photograph, he smiles with arms folded, exuding the confidence of a young man who identifies himself...

-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) election manifesto for 2014 Lok Sabha election says that if elected to the Centre, it will then "(p)ut in place welfare measures for farmers above 60 years in age, small and marginal farmers and farm labours", among other things. Despite the formation of a BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre in 2014, the latest available data on farm suicides from the...