-TheWire.in With the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation scheme, Naveen Patnaik has likely scored an electoral point over the BJP and Congress. New Delhi: Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik – who is seeking a record fifth term in office – introduced a farming assistance scheme worth more than Rs 10,000 crore on December 21. Believed by many to be a measure to counter the larger political rhetoric around farm loan...

-Newsclick.in Funding is not keeping pace with demand, and delays or vanished dues are discouraging job seekers in these times of extreme rural distress. Here is a little known but chilling fact about the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGS: between April and mid-December this year, about 1.28 crore people who demanded jobs were turned back. This refusal to give work has been happening every year but it has increased after the Modi...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural Labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...

-The Telegraph Their demand for assured remunerative prices, therefore, is perfectly justified There are occasions when one suddenly becomes aware not just of the inadequacy of economic concepts for understanding reality but even of their obfuscating role. One such occasion was the recent kisan march in Delhi. The peasants have been facing distress for long, which has resulted in more than three lakh suicides over the last two-and-a-half decades, in growing indebtedness...

-The Indian Express Will the kisan take care of interests of landless peasants as well? In the aftermath of the demonstrations by farmers in the name of agricultural prices and loan waiving, it is important to remember that village India also comprises of landless peasants who have nothing to sell on the market and have never gone to a bank. Their condition has deteriorated, too, as a result not only of the...