-The Financial Express A half-dozen years ago, I participated in a conference on water resource challenges in India. I remember Upmanu Lall, professor at Columbia University, graphically and bluntly making the point that Punjab’s water table was not far from collapse. This has been known for years, and there have been feeble efforts to deal with the problem, but they have been far short of what is needed. My own understanding...

-Livemint.com Not only better integration of farmers with markets, but also large investments in agriculture are the need of the hour The deaths of five farmers in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district has brought the crisis in agriculture centre stage. While the latest incident may have got media coverage, the fact is that the crisis has been in the making for some time. It intensified in the last one year but signs of...

-Livemint.com The earnings of an average farm household in Madhya Pradesh remains among the lowest India, although farmers have gained from rapid agricultural growth Mumbai: Protests by farmers across India amid bumper harvests have surprised many. The biggest source of surprise has been one of the hotspots of the protests, Madhya Pradesh (MP), a state that has posted record agricultural growth over the past several years. A Mint analysis shows that although farmers...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Farmers protesting in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra demand better prices for their produce and loan waivers. But low prices and loans are not the real problems. These are mere symptoms of structural problems which cannot be solved by temporary measures such as a loan waiver. "While such turmoil appears to have immediate causes, their sources are rooted in problems that lie deeper," says Prakash Bakshi, a former...

-NDTV Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian says farmers would not only lose the income from livestock as meat but also have to incur additional costs to maintain unproductive cattle. Already, he adds, there was research to suggest that returns to livestock farming are in any case "very low or even negative". NEW DELHI:  Arvind Subramanian, the government's Chief Economic Adviser, has broken his silence on the issue of cattle slaughter. And...