-Down to Earth A new study is focusing on identifying vulnerable farmers in Punjab, Maharashtra and Telangana, the three states that experience high rate of suicide In India, farmer suicide is an issue that has been talked about widely. The cases of farmers’ suicide rose by 42 per cent between 2014 and 2015. In 2015, one farmer committed suicide every hour. The latest report of the National Crime Bureau (NCB) shows that...

-Hindustan Times Of the affected states are also those announced farm loan waivers just months ago to bail out beleaguered farming community. With the southwest monsoon season about to end in less than three weeks’ time, the government’s drought warning system predicts there could be a drought in 225 districts across “17 agriculturally important states of India,” putting further strain on distressed agriculture sector. According to the government’s National Agriculture and Drought...

-The Indian Express Plunged from 8.61 L hectares in 2014 to 4.5 L hectares this year Jalandhar: THE POOR rate of Basmati (fine quality aromatic rice) which Punjab farmers have been getting for the past few years has resulted in reduced acreage and, in the past four years, the area of cultivation has decreased to nearly half under the crop. Scientists say that due to decrease in Basmati cultivation, the area under...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's growth juggernaut has started to lose steam. In the mid-year Economic Survey, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian flagged big risks to economic growth and fiscal targets while asserting that the country had entered a "new phase of relatively low, possibly very low, inflation". In the first volume of the survey published in January, the government had forecast GDP growth in the range of 6.75 to 7.5 per cent...

-The Indian Express The failure of populist rural credit schemes stems primarily from poor understanding of farm indebtedness in the first place. From the 1970s, a lot of private investment in tube-well irrigation, farm mechanisation and allied agricultural activities took place with bank credit support. After the establishment of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982, institutional credit flows not only accelerated, but also exhibited diversification to fund livestock...