-Livemint.com Banks in Maharashtra have issued only 22% of the kharif season lending target of Rs43,342 crore till 27 June, said an official at the state department of cooperation Mumbai: Farm discontent is raising its head in Maharashtra yet again as banks remain tight-fisted on crop loans at the beginning of the sowing season, cancelling out the benefits of last year’s mega loan waiver. Banks in Maharashtra have issued only 22% of the...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...

-Hindustan Times Profitability takes a hit as real MSPs have not risen over the years New Delhi: Most commentary around rural anger in India has been focused on either the sector’s growth performance or government spending on agriculture. Such analysis is likely to present an incomplete picture at best. Government spending on agriculture is a small fraction of the total agricultural economic output. In 2017-18, the ministry of agriculture’s spending was less...

-The Indian Express Two protesters had died in police firing at Bahi Parswanath and three outside Pipliyamandi Police Station on June 6. Bhopal: The judicial probe constituted after six deaths and violence during farmers’ agitation in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, in June last year, has given a clean chit to the police and CRPF personnel and held that firing was absolutely necessary (“nitant awashyak”) and justified (“nyaysangat”). The J K Jain Commission report, submitted...

-The Hindu Farmers have been staging protests as domestic prices are falling on the back of a glut last year and an expected good harvest following a good monsoon New Delhi: The Union government has allotted quotas for import of pulses and is enforcing an additional import agreement with Mozambique at a time when domestic stocks are at their highest, domestic production is expected to be high and prices are crashing. Farmers...