-The Hindu Business Line To help farmers, a long-term plan to improve input delivery, irrigation and rural infrastructure is a must Some 60 years ago, the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: “Everything can wait except agriculture”. But for the last two decades, agriculture has been waiting even as the economy has continued to make rapid strides. The country is today paying a price for the omissions and commissions of successive governments...

-The Hindu Business Line Silencing the critics of Indian green revolution, who have been arguing that its achievements were short-lived and that a fatigue had set in a long ago, a senior Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) official on Friday said there is ample proof to show that the country is still going through a green revolution which is rather a silent one. The productivity gains of Indian Agriculture in the...

-The Indian Express An income transfer policy combined with direct cash transfer is the best way to help the farmer Losses in the recent elections to the assemblies of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have given the BJP a jolt. The party had misjudged the gravity of the farm distress problem till then: The Union agriculture minister described farmer agitations as “political drama”. However, the party not only acknowledges the crisis...

-The Hindu Business Line Opening farm sector for global trade will give farmers a bigger market: S Narayan Farm sector distress is expected to worsen, cautioned S Narayan, who was the Economic Adviser to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. No remunerative prices Speaking on ‘Economy in Election Year’, organised by the Chennai chapter of the Observers Research Foundation, Narayan said the underlying problem is one of abundance of production and farmers not getting...

-The Indian Express Lowering production costs, and a policy shift from ‘managing shortages’ to ‘handling surpluses’, is the way forward for Indian Agriculture The government wants farmers’ incomes to double in five years by 2022. While a laudable objective, the reality today is that farmers are suffering stress, if not shrinkage, in their incomes. The demand for loan waivers, and political pressures to implement these, is only a reflection of this...