-The Hindustan Times Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab): With power crisis worsening in Punjab, farmers in the region have turned to innovations such as using tractor batteries and generators to run tube wells for irrigation. Saying that paddy required plenty of water for cultivation, the farmers claimed the power cuts crippled water supply. On Friday, the PSPCL had decided to reduce power supply to farmers by two hours in order to facilitate better supply...

-The Times of India   LUCKNOW: With the spectre of a drought-like condition looming large in the state, the contingency plan of the government, too, is severely deficient on two basic component: power and seeds. There is no special plan to provide power to farmers who are already desperate due to delayed rains, to help them irrigate their farms for paddy saplings. Besides, seeds are hardly available in government storages. In drought-like situation,...

-The New Indian Express   PARALAKHEMUNDI: Miliara, a nondescript tribal dominated village in Gumma block of Gajapati, wears a deserted look. Home to 62 families, many of them have shifted to other parts of the State to escape the cruel summer. And those who have stayed back are having to struggle with water crisis, the biggest problem in the village. Villagers here earn their livelihood from tamarind and cashewnut plantation. But no the yield...

-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...

-The Hindu Groundwater meets three quarters of the State's farming needs The Punjab State Farmers Commission recently published a draft new agriculture policy for the State that envisages substantial crop diversification from paddy and wheat staples that the State has been growing since the sixties. The draft policy, currently being debated in agriculture circles, is the first serious road map to steer Punjab's agriculture towards a new dynamic, necessitated by a sharp...