-The Indian Express The farmers are under severe stress, with profitability in farming falling alarmingly. FY17 budget must boldly address the agriculture crisis. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his team are beginning pre-budget consultations with various stakeholders for the upcoming FY17 budget. Generally, the consultations start with agriculture, slated for January 4. It’s good practice and courteous to invite farm experts and farmers’ representatives. Often, one finds these meetings full of anguish...

-The Indian Express The sector is ripe for reform. Will the Centre bite the bullet in the next budget? One of the top economic priorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to boost the manufacturing sector. Much of the effort to attract FDI is geared towards this. But the fertiliser sector has not seen any major fresh investment in the last 15 years or so. Some urea manufacturers are even seriously thinking of...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: In an effort to raise agriculture productivity and raise farm prices, government's premier think tank NITI Aayog is considering a series of big ticket agriculture reforms that include changes in the fertiliser policy to allow free import of urea, explore transgenic crops in pulses and oilseeds and make land laws transparent. A paper emerging from the work of Aayog's task force on agriculture development, has moving fertiliser...

-The Asian Age It’s a huge story. And it’s not getting the kind of media attention it deserves. It’s a story about India’s farmers. It’s a story about the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country in the wake of two successive years of drought. If one looks only at the figures of growth of gross domestic product which tend to make headlines in financial publications, there’s no story for agriculture comprises...

-Civil Society Online Bhubaneswar: Laxman Goud, a 35-year-old farmer in Thakurpalli village in Komna block of Nuapada district of Odisha, used to lead a very simple life. He was a devoted follower of Mahima Dharma, a subaltern religion practised by underprivileged castes in Odisha. One morning, he took his life in desperation. He couldn’t repay Rs 19,000 he had borrowed from a local moneylender at 36 per cent interest. Goud had invested...