-The Hindu India's small farmers have been struggling for centuries now and they need social and governmental action to change their future Of India's 121 million agricultural holdings, 99 million are with small and marginal farmers, with a land share of just 44 per cent and a farmer population share of 87 per cent. With multiple cropping prevalent, such farmers account for 70 per cent of all vegetables and 52 per cent...

-The Hindustan Times India is likely to face a cotton glut this year. The surplus, however, will be of little comfort to suicide-prone and highly indebted farmers, who stare at a sharp drop in earnings - prices are already down 14% compared with last year. The crisis has to do with a slowdown in China, which is forecast to slash by half the amount of cotton it will import this year, most...

-Frontline The problem in rural India is not one of too much credit to poor households that leads to debt waivers that damage bank balance sheets, but one of inadequate access to credit from formal sources. IF Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is to be believed, efforts to help Indian farmers by providing them with cheap(er) credit and relieving them of an unsustainable debt burden only harms them in the...

-Down to Earth It provides farmers with services to improve productivity and find better prices A non-profit based in Telangana, working on agricultural research and development, has launched a low-cost phone cum tablet computer-phablet-to benefit small holder farmers. "GreenPHABLET will allow information to be precisely targeted to individual smallholder farmers, helping them to purchase inputs at a lower price and get a better price for their produce. It will also link them to...

-The Hindu Business Line   The CAG report details how these have neither helped industrial development nor boosted the economy Nearly a decade after the Special Economic Zones Act was brought into force, it is evident that the move has not helped industrial development. After examining SEZs in terms of background and objectives, fiscal incentives and facilities, approval process and administration, as well as life cycle, State-wise distribution and overall performance, parts of a...