-The Economic Times ARIYALUR: Everyone else may love a good drought, but not the victims who stare at a dim future. As serious drought looms large over South India, farmers live in distress and despair fearing a steep drop in acre age and Yields. There may have been a few temporary measures by governments to compensate the dam ages, but that may be too little too late. ET's team of reporters walked...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-TelanganaToday.news Promotion of small farmer economy will help escape the six-decade-old crisis and boost the sector in State Agriculture in Telangana, particularly being carried out by small and marginal farmers, is poised for a rapid transition in the coming years. More so, after the historical announcement of a major policy on promotion of small farmer economy by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao at the recently-held plenary. The first full-scale Budget of 2015-16 addressed...

-The Indian Express A good, even if not record, wheat crop along with improved prices brings cheer after two not-so-good years. Dewas (Madhya Pradesh): Manohar Singh Sendhav cannot offhand recall the number of trips he has made to the Dewas mandi or to the shining steel silo at Durgapur, some 10 km away. Undaunted by the searing noon heat, this farmer from Chandakhedi village in Dewas district’s Sonkatch taluka watches his tractor driver...

-Livemint.com Farmers are already refusing to repay loans in Maharashtra, expecting a waiver in the works on the lines of that in Uttar Pradesh Mumbai: Would you bother to repay a loan if it was going to be written off anyway? Probably not. There’s no farm loan waiver in Maharashtra yet, but farmers are already refusing to repay loans as they expect a waiver in the works, officials in the state’s co-operative banking...