-The Hindu Business Line Whether it is promoting a lease market in land or the use of tractors, credit should be tailored to the needs of marginal players The Finance Minister has announced several measures to make farming competitive and rev up growth in agriculture. While this is welcome, the sector as a whole needs an overhaul to make best use of these measures. To address the needs of landless farmers who are...

-Live Mint The return on cows and buffaloes, like that of many stocks traded on Wall Street, is positive in some years and negative in others This is one piece of news that would please Dinanath Batra and his cow-loving fans: Recent research by a team of economists show that rural Indians investing in cows and buffaloes may be acting quite rationally, overturning earlier research by another set of economists which showed...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Business Standard The Punjab experience suggests rising agricultural productivity doesn't automatically translate into better jobs,but the story doesn't end there. A recent paper on the post-Green revolution economic transition of Punjab's peasantry, published by Punjab Agricultural University professors Sukhpal Singh and Shruti Bhogal, suggests that increasing productivity of rural workers is only one part of the agriculture to manufacturing transition. Punjab has the most mechanized agricultural sector in the country,...

-The Hindu   With water becoming an important cost, and with climate change and soil degradation, the System of Rice Intensification offers disadvantaged farming households better opportunities A truant monsoon is in the offing, with El Niño weather patterns expected to bring about drier conditions. India has the world's largest area devoted to rice, a very water-intensive crop. This is a good time for giving impetus to "more crop per drop" practices, now...