-The Times of India As crops fail, banks don't deliver and the government falters, Mandya's farmers find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous moneylenders Chenne Gowda has a Rs. 4 lakh albatross around his neck. The 55-year-old sugarcane farmer from Chikka maralli village in Pan davapura taluk, Mandya district, took the loan from private moneylenders but has no idea how he'll repay. His crop, on two acres, is wilting in the field...
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Properly used, Jan Dhan Yojna could lessen farmers' suicides
-Hindustan Times For a country that is set to be ranked among the world’s top five economies over the next decade, India cannot afford to be counted as a home for impoverished farmers who are ending their lives because they do not have the money to return loans as small as Rs 10,000. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 5,650 farmers committed suicide in India last year. Bankruptcy and...
More »How One Woman Helped Light Rural India With Solar Lamps -Wendy Koch
-NationalGeographic.com She grew up in an affluent New York town but soon after college, Ajaita Shah went to her parents’ native India to work with the poor JAIPUR: “I saw a 5-year-old die in five seconds,” says Ajaita Shah, recalling the Indian girl enveloped by a kerosene fire at home. “There was nothing we could do.” Not then. But since that 2008 disaster, Shah has helped cut the use of kerosene lamps in...
More »What Will It Take to Bring a Second Green Revolution to India? -Bijay Singh
-IPS News LUDHIANA: Long-term agricultural growth in India is slowing down. The lands that saw remarkable increases in productivity in the 1970s and 80s, thanks to the technology rolled out as part of the first “Green Revolution”, are not yielding the same results today. India still has the second highest number of undernourished people in the world. To confront this problem, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a Second Green Revolution on Indian...
More »Who cares for the small farmer? -PSM Rao
-The Hindu Business Line Not the RBI, going by the revised priority sector lending norms, which will further reduce credit to the marginalised Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often expressed his sense of anguish at the plight of farmers. In a recent statement in the Lok Sabha, he noted that the agriculture community’s problems were “old, deep-rooted and widespread”, and stated that farmers cannot be left to fend for themselves. Implicit in that...
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