-The New Indian Express Something remarkable happened when the farmers came marching to Mumbai recently. Instead of greeting them with hostility, Mumbaikars welcomed them with affection, food and water. This change in attitude was triggered by the farmers’ extraordinary discipline and their efforts to ensure minimal disruption to the Mumbaikars’ routines. Even hard-boiled journalists acknowledged, for a brief moment, urbanites had realised  our farmers and adivasis were indeed facing difficult times. The...

-The Indian Express NEW DELHI: The government’s ambitious minimum support price (MSP) scheme to improve farmers’ income has hit a roadblock as Niti Aayog missed the deadline to suggest a viable procurement model. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced in his Budget speech the government would ensure agriculture produce is procured at the revised MSP, which will be 1.5 times the production cost. The Centre had entrusted the think tank with...

-The Indian Express The last two years have seen some progress in expediting completion of unfinished major and minor canal projects. Pune: Sustained efforts over the last two years to improve irrigation access for farmers in India seem to have begun showing results, at least in terms of creation of physical infrastructure. The Narendra Modi government had, in 2016, embarked on a mission to complete all unfinished major and medium irrigation projects – some...

-The Indian Express Sukhdev Singh Kokari Kalan, general secretary of BKU (Ugrahan), said that Captain Amarinder Singh had not fulfilled his promise and the policies he is bringing in the budget is ‘suicidal’ for the farmers. Jalandhar: The farming community, which is under acute depression due to long goining agrarian crisis, were left disappointed as the Congress government in Punjab announced its second budget Saturday. Experts and farmers of Punjab have...

-The Hindu Business Line Eleven years since its inception, the State’s farmer’s debt relief commission has quietly eased the burden of debt on poor farmers, and grown to be a model worth emulating Earlier this week 35,000 debt-ridden farmers coursed through Maharashtra, walking 180 km on blistered soles, to converge at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan demanding freedom from debt and fair compensation for their produce. As the government scrounged for solutions, it could’ve...