-The New Indian Express As polling season concludes across the country, The Sunday Standard puts an ear to the ground and listens in to the expectations that India has from its next government NEW DELHI: Agrarian irony cries out in Punjab, the food bowl of the country, with farmers’ indebtedness only growing in recent years.    The agrarian irony is marked by overproduction in the face of inadequate price, with lopsided institutional credit,...

-Down to Earth The new government has to focus on the rural population, their aspirations and the economy By this time most of us know Sunaina Rawat. Still a brief introduction: she is a 12-year-old girl from a village in Uttar Pradesh. When the news channel NDTV’s head Prannoy Roy interviewed her on life and aspirations while covering elections, she immediately became one of the most imposing symbol for the country’s rural...

-The Indian Express For all their talk on farm distress, on agriculture, BJP, Congress show they have not learnt from past failures. We often feel proud of our democratic system. But it also has a shortcoming, which has been magnified in the current election season. The conversation today is not about what the BJP/NDA promised in its manifesto of 2014, and how far they have been able to deliver on their...

-The Hindu Several interventions are needed on the demand and supply side to alleviate farm distress Loan waivers remain the preferred solution for governments to tackle farm distress. S. Mahendra Dev and M. Govinda Rao talk about the inability of governments to think of long-term solutions to tackle farm distress, in a discussion moderated by Vikas Dhoot. Edited excerpts: * Despite farm productivity rising, severe distress in the sector is a concern. How...

-The Hindu How India can shift its agriculture from a high-yield ideal to a high-value one When the news broke that PepsiCo was suing small farmers in India for growing a potato variety that is used in its Lay’s chips, popular sympathies immediately went, of course, to the farmers. National and international pressure swiftly mounted, and in short order a humbled PepsiCo backtracked, announcing its withdrawal of the lawsuit. There was global...