-The Asian Age It’s a huge story. And it’s not getting the kind of media attention it deserves. It’s a story about India’s farmers. It’s a story about the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country in the wake of two successive years of drought. If one looks only at the figures of growth of gross domestic product which tend to make headlines in financial publications, there’s no story for agriculture comprises...

-Civil Society Online Bhubaneswar: Laxman Goud, a 35-year-old farmer in Thakurpalli village in Komna block of Nuapada district of Odisha, used to lead a very simple life. He was a devoted follower of Mahima Dharma, a subaltern religion practised by underprivileged castes in Odisha. One morning, he took his life in desperation. He couldn’t repay Rs 19,000 he had borrowed from a local moneylender at 36 per cent interest. Goud had invested...

Often considered to be a rain-abundant region, the North East has been receiving lesser rainfall during the South West monsoon in the recent years as compared to the 1980s and 1990s. This has been revealed in a study entitled Unprecedented drought in North East India compared to Western India done by Bikash Ranjan Parida and Bakimchandra Oinam (see the link below). Appearing in the December issue of prestigious peer-reviewed scientific...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's traditionally wet northeastern region has experienced a higher frequency of drought than arid western India over the past 15 years, researchers have said, cautioning that this trend has implications for crop productivity in the region. An analysis of the summer monsoon rainfall since 2000 has shown that the probability of drought was 54 per cent in the northeastern region and 27 per cent in the traditionally arid...

-The Indian Express Madhya Pradesh’s agricultural growth rates offer important lessons for the Centre Shivraj Singh Chouhan completed 10 years in office as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh last week. His most outstanding achievement is the excellent performance of agriculture — the agri-GDP of MP grew at 9.7 per cent per annum during 2005-06 to 2014-15, surpassing even record-holder Gujarat’s 7.7 per cent. The last five years have been even more...