-Outlook Good monsoon or bad, glut or drought, boom or bust...it’s always fair weather for the range of middlemen who come between the Farmer and consumer. An anatomy of the trade. One of the axioms of logic is called the Law of the Excluded Middle. Something has to be eit­her true or false—there’s no middle ground. As we all know, economics works a bit differently. Facts can be fickle, data pliable, and...

-Hindustan Times First came demonetisation. Then, as banknotes slowly returned to circulation, a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses in the state wrecked the local market for cattle. In Ilyas Khan’s eyes shine the pride of a grand past that give way to the clouds of an uncertain future. Two decades ago, the Thursday cattle market he runs in western Uttar Pradesh’s Banat saw traders troop in from faraway Delhi and Bihar. Today, the...

-The Hindu Six months after Tamil Nadu was declared drought-hit, Farmers across the Delta districts are no longer blaming Karnataka On June 12, the customary date on which the Mettur dam in Salem district is opened to provide water to the lower reaches of the Cauvery, the riverbed stretched as far as the eyes can see, barren as a desert. P. Ayyakannu, the Farmer-leader who recently led a series of protests against...

-Livemint.com Madhya Pradesh Farmers are unhappy that outsiders are misled by claims made by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan Indore, Harda, Mandsaur (MP): Ghanshyam Singh Pipawat, 45, a Farmer from the Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh, has a question for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “When Modi declared notebandi, he said this would be the last time people will have to stand in line. Then why am I standing in a 2-km-long line to...

-Newsclick.in Forget 50 percent profit over the cost of production, the Farmers were forced to sell their produce at well below the minimum support price and the cost of production, pushing them deeper into debt. Farming turning increasingly unviable across vast swathes of India, and the Narendra Modi-led government not delivering on the BJP’s election promise to “make agriculture rewarding” lie behind the massive protests that have rocked several BJP-ruled states in...