-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...

-Economic and Political Weekly The union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare had prescribed a model Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act in 2003. The state-level adoption of the act has been tardy and varied in terms of both the magnitude and content of agricultural market reforms. Yet, the ministry under the current central government has come up with another model act, the Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act,...

-The Indian Express Meghalaya mine collapse: Terming it a 'serious issue,' the bench said 'it is a question of life and death.' The Supreme Court Thursday expressed “dissatisfaction” with the manner in which the Meghalaya government organised the operations to rescue the 15 miners trapped inside a rat-hole mine in the state. Terming it a “serious issue,” a two-judge bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and S Abdul Nazeer questioned why...

-Scroll.in The former Planning Commission member explains why the country needs to tread carefully on this idea. On January 1, when Indian news agency ANI asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the government’s plans to reduce agrarian distress, he said loan waivers do not work as a very small segment of farmers take loans from banks. “A majority of them take loans from money lenders,” said Modi. “When governments make such announcements,...

-The Hindu Business Line Export sops, higher consumption to help get rid of excess milk powder stocks The New Year is set to bring smiles on the faces of dairy farmers, thanks to firm prices of the skimmed milk powder (SMP) following export incentives by the government. Most co-operative dairies and private players were able to get rid of their excess SMP stock, which led to firming up of prices by at least...