-Livemint.com Madhya Pradesh government had launched the compensation scheme to ensure that farmers receive minimum support price for pulses and oilseeds New Delhi: An ambitious scheme launched by the Madhya Pradesh government to ensure that farmers receive minimum support prices (MSP) for pulses and oilseeds is falling prey to trader cartels, suggest price data from wholesale markets and testimonies by farmer organizations. Following a sharp fall in crop prices over the past year...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India will need to quintuple its investments on tuberculosis control over the next five years for a "substantial impact", says a World Health Organisation report released on Monday. The report says that India will need to invest at least $3.4 billion (Rs 22,000 crore), or nearly five times the Rs 4,500 crore spent over the past five years. The estimated requirement translates into an annual spending of about...

-Scroll.in The state’s expenditure on agriculture and irrigation has fallen since 2013-’14. In the run-up to the Gujarat assembly elections, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on October 16 announced that his government would offer interest free-loans to farmers who borrow up to Rs 3 lakh and pay the amount back on time. Many Opposition politics criticised this as a populist measure, aimed at garnering votes for Rupani’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Reducing the interest...

-Livemint.com In India, 9 million people left farming between 2001 and 2011 largely due to distress, not because industry invited them, says Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the FAO Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, says more Indians are moving out of agriculture due to distress and not because the manufacturing sector is inviting them. In an interview, Khadka calls for converting food...

-Governance Now On World Food Day, the country needs to focus on promoting the dying practice of locally producing food by aboriginals like Baigas and Gonds After spending almost a month among tribals of Mandla in Madhya Pradesh, I can confidently say that by restricting ourselves to Public Distribution System (PDS), we cannot solve the food security issues of the country.   The problem is graver. In a district like Mandla, where...