-The Indian Express In the end, the Madden Julian Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole failed to cancel out the warming of the Pacific — a situation the Met Office had predicted as early as in April, giving govts time to prepare. In June, a rain-bearing weather phenomenon called Madden Julian Oscillation, or MJO, came to India’s rescue. July was bad, but a few timely interventions by convectional, or heat-induced, rainfall in...

-Business Standard Indian farming is labour intensive as mechanization is expensive. This model might change it while keeping the cost very low. The single biggest challenge in farming is debt. A large share of farmers’ insurmountable debt burden comes from purchase of farm equipment. Mechanized farming results in higher productivity but is notoriously capital intensive. A 40 HP tractor with 2 basic implements (a rotavator and a cultivator) and a trolley costs...

-The Hindustan Times The skyrocketing prices of onions, a key ingredient used in making dishes ranging from curries to biryanis, reflects India’s inability to insulate staples from weather-induced supply disturbances. On Thursday onions traded at Rs 4,900 a quintal (or Rs 49 a kg) at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, India’s largest wholesale market for the crop. Inadequate supplies have pushed up prices sharply over the last few weeks. Already, retail onion prices have...

-Livemint.com BJP’s U-turn on the proposed land Act reflects a re-balancing of deeper political forces that are at work in India’s political economy The recent U-turn by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on the proposed amendment to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (henceforth the land Act), can be viewed narrowly as a Congress victory in the ongoing tit-for-tat game that is short-changing...

-Deccan Herald India’s food grain output for 2014-15 fell by nearly five per cent owing to poor monsoon and untimely rainfall last year. The Fourth Advance Estimates of production of major crop pegged the farm output at 252.68 million tonnes – about 4.66 per cent lower than that of 2013-14. The farm sector is set for yet another year of low production as the weather office on Monday forecast 12 per cent...