-The Economic Times Despite substantial increase in agriculture production and productivity levels over the years, farmers’ indebtedness has not changed significantly. According to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (Nafis) 2016-17, 52.5% of agricultural households were indebted. Considerable efforts have been taken in channelising institutional credit to farmers and raising farm credit disbursement targets, with allocations increasing by Rs 1 lakh crore in...

-The Hindu Business Line Girl child seen as a burden in the region that reels under drought Thirty-eight-year-old Meera Ekhande from Beed district in Marathwada region of Maharashtra had given birth to seven girls and aborted two, but her family kept insisting on having a son. In her tenth pregnancy, Meera was delivered of a stillborn boy and she died because of excessive bleeding. But this is not an isolated case in...

-The Hindu In addition to reforming the credit system, agriculture should be made profitable Rural agrarian distress is firmly at the centre of the national discourse today, triggered by the recent Assembly election results in the Hindi heartland as well as continuous farmer agitations in the past two years (picture). Just a month ago, the farmers’ march in Delhi highlighted the reality of their deprivation, anger and resolve. Quite remarkably, their presence...

-Scroll.in For the first time, a Hindi state – Madhya Pradesh – has complained about migrants taking away jobs. Hours after taking oath as the new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh on December 18, Kamal Nath declared that outsiders were grabbing jobs meant for locals. “People from states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh come here and local people don’t get jobs,” he said. His government went on to issue an executive order...

-Livemint.com Thanks to the debt relief commission, 11,354 Kerala farmers have benefited from a disbursement of over ?11 crore, and there are no farmer suicides in the state Ernakulam/ Bengaluru: Back in 2006, Kerala came face to face with an explosive situation. Ironically in a state dominated by Communist politicians, farming was dominated by export-oriented cash crops such as rubber and pepper, prices of which had plunged in the global market. It...