-Livemint.com The capricious nature of groundwater has resulted in so much exploitation and overuse that we now have a consistent crisis. Presenting a roadmap for groundwater governance and information transparency using technology India is a groundwater civilization. Almost all Indians use groundwater, directly or indirectly, each day. This tradition goes back more than 2,000 years. India is criss-crossed with the most elegant wells that tap into the shallow aquifer. The oldest wells...

-Outlook The collection of separate figures for suicides of farmers and farm labour has started in 2014, the year in which there were 5650 farmers committed suicides as against 6710 cases of farm labour suicides. According to the latest figures released by the government, farmer suicides in 2016 have come down to 6351 from 8007 in 2015, a drop of 21 per cent.  Suicides among agricultural labourers, however, have gone up by...

-The Indian Express The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims to identify the causes behind the farm crisis in these regions, says top priority should be given to watershed strategies while planning mitigation measures. Pune: Subsidies and debt waivers cannot resolve the agrarian crisis, according to a study by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE). The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims...

-TheWire.in Despite the agrarian crisis that India is reeling under, the parliamentary standing committee noted that the government’s efforts in implementing irrigation projects has been ‘lethargic’. New Delhi: A report of the parliamentary standing committee on rural development has revealed that only 10% of the projects taken up under the watershed development component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) have been completed. The report outlines that given that a majority...

-The Hindu Business Line The trend of farm loan waivers has gripped the country and Karnataka is the latest to jump on to the bandwagon. The fiscal strain of farm loan waivers on the States is worrisome. As per RBI, the gross fiscal deficit (GFD) of States rose to 3.1 per cent of GDP in 2017-18, breaching the threshold of 3 per cent GFD/GSDP ratio recommended by the Finance Commission. This threshold has...