-Livemint.com Karnataka govt has stopped the sale of paddy seeds in some districts hoping to get farmers to switch to ragi and jowar among other coarse grains Bengaluru: Following a lukewarm response to its promotional efforts, Karnataka has resorted to more forceful measures to get farmers in the Cauvery command area to switch from cultivating water-intensive crops such as paddy and sugarcane to drought-tolerant millets as part of a plan to stabilize...

-The Times of India Punjab, the leader of green revolution during the '70s, has become disreputable for farmers' suicides in last two decade or so. Usually, these suicides are attributed to farmers' indebtedness to banks and commission agents. However, it is to be noted that bank credit has played a pivotal role in investment into tubewells, tractors, farm mechanization, horticulture, dairy, poultry and forestry all over India, and especially in Punjab and...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: A substantial increase in input costs of materials has led to a decline in crop income over the years. This has resulted in the purchasing power of farmers not improving even though there was an increase in farm output, an official report has said. “By and large, the per hectare real value of output increased for most crops during the period 2004-05 to 2013-14, but the...

-The Financial Express More than ‘normal’ rainfall in the last three weeks in 11 districts of south-interior Karnataka, which received scanty rains in the first two months of monsoon season (June-July), has helped revive kharif sowing activities to a large extent. According to the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), the quantum of rainfall in August so far in these districts, including Mandya, Mysuru, Chitradurga and Bengaluru, has been 95...

-The Indian Express Gorakhpur was only the acute manifestation of the chronic malady that ails our health system Outrage is a natural reaction to the terrible tragedy that cruelly crushed the lives of many innocent children in Gorakhpur. However, outrage is a wasted emotion if it is not accompanied by honest introspection to identify all contributory causes and followed by a cluster of corrective actions. The deaths of these children were caused...