-The Statesman Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed anguish over suicides by farmers, whose condition has not improved despite the high rate of economic growth. The reason for this distressing state of affairs is that economic policies are badly crafted. The primary effort of the Government has been to increase agricultural production. The price factor is not taken into consideration, the perception being that the farmer will be better off...

-The Hindu Business Line How ‘Protected Cultivation' can help prevent crop damage due to national disasters While the first green revolution managed to make the nation self sufficient the next round of reforms certainly needs to address the problems faced by today's farmers. According to statistics available on Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India reaped a record foodgrain production of 259.32 million tonnes (mt) in 2011-12. However, the output fell to 257.13...

-The Hindu Providing access to credit likely to be a hard step For Prime Minister Narendra Modi's newly launched Jan Dhan Yojana to be successful, India needs to provide over 100 million households access to banks, data show. An even harder step, however, is likely to be access to credit. As of March 2012, the most recent year for which relevant Reserve Bank of India (RBI) statistics are available, India had over 900...

-India Today Geography of rice and wheat has been transformed with Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh generating surpluses Almost 50 years ago, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went on air to appeal to Indians to skip a meal a day. Foodgrain supplies had come under strain after the 1965 drought, and the patriotic ethos cautioned against over-consumption: what you ate left that much less for the rest. Today, it is...

-The Times of India In a sternly-worded letter dashed off to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Andhra Pradesh government has urged the institution to not underestimate the distressful conditions prevailing in the state for the past three years, which has forced as many as 6,792 farmers to commit suicide. The nine-page letter dated July 25, countering RBI's argument about AP reporting no cases of acute concern among farmers, has been...