-Hindustan Times Hamirgarh/ Dhanaula/ Chandigarh: Gurpreet Singh and Sandeep Duggal have more than 350 friends on Facebook. At 19, Gurpreet’s profile clearly gravitates to pictures of youth – astride an Enfield motorcycle, one with a friend in the corridors of a college, and the quintessential selfie with sunglasses. Duggal’s is more subdued. In a black-and-white profile photograph, he smiles with arms folded, exuding the confidence of a young man who identifies himself...

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) election manifesto for 2014 Lok Sabha election says that if elected to the Centre, it will then "(p)ut in place welfare measures for farmers above 60 years in age, small and marginal farmers and farm labours", among other things. Despite the formation of a BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre in 2014, the latest available data on farm suicides from the...

-The Financial Express Thiruvananthapuram: Ration shops in Kerala are readying to go the ATM way soon. As many as 14,500 ration retail shops in Kerala will soon be equipped with electronic point of sale (ePoS) machines, which would work as micro-ATMs. The Kerala State IT Mission has been asked to hasten a connectivity survey in rural areas to ensure uninterrupted internet connection, before introducing micro-ATM facility at all fair-price shops. Although the...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal: The Centre’s demonetisation move has hit the farmers in MP’s Bundelkhand hard who were hoping for good rabi crops after facing four years of hardships owing to drought in the region. Farming is the main occupation in the region, and heavy rains this year had brought smiles on the faces of farmers. As the sowing for winter crops was almost complete in this part of the state before demonetisation was...

-TheWire.in Farmers in Vidarbha are being forced to incur terrible losses – by accepting lower prices, losing their perishable produce, or due to a fear of depositing cash payments in old notes in banks where they owe loan repayments. Bandu Ghormade had no choice but to accept the old Rs 500 notes from the procurement agent and a lower price of Rs 200 less for every 40 kilo crate of his freshly...