-The Hindu Write-offs encourage defaulters, affect credit culture, Union Minister of State for Agriculture Parshottam Rupala tells Lok Sabha. On a day when the BJP’s loss in three State elections was partly attributed to rural distress and the Congress’s promise to waive farm loans, the government told the Lok Sabha that it was not considering any loan waiver scheme as it would affect the credit culture, incentivise defaulters, create a moral hazard...

-The Indian Express Why assembly election verdicts should occasion a rethink on loan waivers, MSP raises The results of the elections to state assemblies should be a humbling experience for the BJP. Political pundits have started analysing the verdict, since the reasons for the BJP’s defeat have important implications for the parliamentary election of 2019. One factor that is being flagged by analysts is farm distress. Farmers across the country are not...

Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-The Tribune Muktsar: Harbrinder Singh Gill, a farmer from Tarmala village of the Malout subdivision here, claims to have found an indigenous way to tackle stubble burning and sowing wheat using a pocket-friendly machine. Even officials of the Agriculture Department visited and inspected his fields and were satisfied with his creation. Harbrinder claimed that he had sown wheat crop on 38 acres by using his machine, which he invented four years ago....

-The Hindu Study raises safety, efficacy concerns; call for ban of irrational formulations Of the 110 anti-TB (tuberculosis) Fixed Dose Combinations (FDCs) available in India, only 32 (less than 30%) have been approved by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), the country’s drug regulator. In the case of malaria FDCs, only eight out of 20 (40%), have been approved. These statistics, that give rise to safety and efficacy concerns, have been brought...