-The Hindu Farm distress is increasingly being triggered by excess output and falling prices, but policy fixes are yet to address this Why are Indian farmers perpetually in revolt? The question has been raised by many after the recent farmers’ march to Mumbai and simmering rebellions across the States in recent years. No doubt, agriculture is one segment of the economy on which vote-conscious governments haven’t skimped on outlays. Over the years, Central...

-TheWeek.in Wilful defaults, loans which are deliberately not repaid by companies despite having the capacity to do so, have surged 152 per cent in the last four years of Modi government. A new report prepared by Pinkerton – a risk management consultancy along with PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry – says that both gross NPAs and wilful defaults have been going up post 2008 financial crisis. The value of wilful defaults...

-The Times of India PUNE: Nearly three years into the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for urban areas which promised “housing for all” by 2022, barely 8%, or 3 lakh of the 40.6 lakh houses targeted so far, have been constructed. The situation in the rural version of PMAY is better, but even there only 30%, or 28.8 lakh houses, have been completed against the 95.4 lakh targeted by the rural...

-The Hindu Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...