-The Hindu Business line Distressed farmers are demanding loan waivers, but that should not deflect focus from what needs to be done and undone to address the root cause of the agrarian crisis The farmers’ unrest across the country, and particularly across several BJP-ruled States, appears to have caught the central government by surprise. But it should really not have done so. Ever since candidate Narendra Modi in 2014 promised the farmers...

-The Hindu Business Line Recent macro data hint at delayed second-order impacts from note ban Did the Indian economy suffer only temporary hiccups from the abrupt withdrawal of high-value currency notes in November 2016? Until recently, the Government and quite a few commentators were convinced that it did. Macro-economic data releases such as the first advance GDP estimates (which retained real gross value added, or GVA, growth at 7 per cent for...

-The Economic Times blog Farmers, from Punjab in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, have started agitations demanding farm loans be waived. The Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra governments have already considered it politically expedient to write them off. Some other states may follow the suit. However, such decisions are as misguided as they are misleading. Nonetheless, it will be a mistake to treat the agitations as a domino effect of...

-The Indian Express India faces not just a farmers’ crisis, but a serious meltdown of farming families Amongst the images of agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh, it was striking to see how many were youngsters dressed in jeans and shirts — they were clearly not all farmers, but also farmers’ sons, unhappy with jobless growth. We are facing not just a farmers’ crisis today, but also a crisis of farming families, whose...

-Livemint.com Not only better integration of farmers with markets, but also large investments in agriculture are the need of the hour The deaths of five farmers in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district has brought the crisis in agriculture centre stage. While the latest incident may have got media coverage, the fact is that the crisis has been in the making for some time. It intensified in the last one year but signs of...