-The Indian Express During the election campaign, the BJP had promised a 50 per cent profit margin on minimum support prices to farmers. But over the past year, the optimism of farmers has turned to despair. Since the parliamentary elections, basmati paddy prices have fallen by 35 per cent and cotton by 25 per cent. The era of cooperative federalism notwithstanding, the Centre practically decreed that states not announce a crop...
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In true colours -Sudhir Kumar Panwar
-Frontline The BJP-led NDA government has, in the two Budgets it has presented so far, revealed itself to be very different from the pro-farmer image that its leading election campaigner and now Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, projected. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha election states: "Agriculture is the engine of India's economic growth and the largest employer, and BJP commits highest priority to agriculture growth, increases in...
More »Right to life overrides right to do business, Supreme Court rules -Dhananjay Mahapatra
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Right to life outweighed right to do business with the Supreme Court on Monday rejecting State Bank of India's petition challenging an Allahabad high court order directing sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh to sell the sugar stock hypothecated to SBI against loans to pay sugarcane farmers' dues. Sugar mills had taken loans totaling Rs 3,000 crore from SBI by hypothecating their sugar stock. Under law, the...
More »Uttar Pradesh’s sugar crisis leading to suicides -Mohammad Ali
-The Hindu At least five cases have been reported in recent times from western part of the State Meerut (Uttar Pradesh): When Rahul, a sugarcane farmer in Badaut area of Baghpat district in western U.P., shot himself on the night of September 13, he had a debt of Rs. 12 lakh. Rahul shot himself with his brother's licensed rifle in his house in Dhikana village. Anil Kumar, the Station House Officer of Badaut...
More »Western Uttar Pradesh farmers on the brink -Sayantan Bera
-Live Mint Together with unpaid sugarcane arrears from mills, an errant monsoon has made the situation acute for farmers On the night of 28 August, at 1.30am, 40-year-old sugarcane farmer Rambeer Rathi shot himself in the head with a country-made revolver. A few days earlier, Rathi, of Tikri village in Baghpat district of western Uttar Pradesh, had sold two of his buffaloes to repay a bank loan of Rs.80,000 taken last year. But even...
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