-Rediff.com 'Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the states worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher. In Maharashtra, farmers were killing themselves at a rate that was 162 per cent higher than that for any other Indians excluding farmers. A farmer in this state...
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Union Budget and the 'Digital Divide': Old Wine in New Bottle -Vipul Mudgal
-Economic and Political Weekly The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...
More »Confusion galore on India and WTO -Pradeep S Mehta
-Live Mint India's principled stand seeking parallel progress on trade facilitation and Food security agreements at the WTO is a right step While Food security is a matter of national sovereignty (Mint Edit, 22 July), let us not confuse it with trade negotiations, as many are indulging in. Secondly, the World Trade Organization (WTO) issue is on production subsidies and not consumption subsidies, so it does not affect our poor consumers. India's...
More »Not just Centre, states don’t want GM crops either -Sandip Das
-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government's decision to disallow field trials of 15 varieties of genetically modified (GM) crops came on top of several state governments virtually thwarting such trials of 45 GM crop varieties approved by the regulator during the previous UPA regime. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) gave approval for 45 GM crop trials ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. However, states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha,...
More »Why we still need the APMC laws -Madan Sabnavis
-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer One of the issues often raised in the context of high Food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...
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