-Livemint.com 2016 recorded the lowest suicides in the farm sector in over two decades, shows data shared by agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh New Delhi: There is little doubt that 2016 was replete with positive data on agriculture sector—a normal monsoon, record production of grains and perishables, and a rebound in the farm sector growth after consecutive years of drought-induced dismal performance. However, this positive data failed to lift farmers’ sentiment because...

-PTI ‘North central region seeing much wetter pattern, with stronger monsoons over the last 15 years’ Washington: Monsoon has strengthened over north central India in the last 15 years, researchers from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have said, indicating a reversal in the general perception that the region has dried up in over a decade. Chien Wang, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, the...

-The Times of India PALANPUR: Tragedy struck Khariya village in Gujarat's Banaskantha on Wednesday when 18 bodies — all close relatives — were recovered from a river bank, taking the flood related death toll since the beginning of monsoon to 119. The toll may go up as rescue operations are on. Villagers in Khariya watched in disbelief as the bodies were found one after another from the slush and placed in a...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre in a U-turn today told the Supreme Court the right to privacy can be a fundamental right subject to certain limitations, and said it wanted a "smaller bench" - instead of the current nine-judge constitution bench - to decide whether the Aadhaar scheme violated that right. Attorney-general K.K. Venugopal, the country's top law officer, made the concession after the bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and...

-The Indian Express For farmers, a uniform 2 per cent premium rate on sum insured (SI) for all kharif or monsoon season foodgrains and oilseeds, while 1.5 per cent for rabi winter crops and 5 per cent for annual commercial and horticultural crops, is the lowest they can hope for. The country couldn’t possibly have, at least on paper, a better agricultural crop insurance scheme than the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima...