-National Herald Last year, Centre had informed the Supreme Court that despite a multi-pronged approach to improve income and social security of farmers, over 12,000 suicides were reported in the agricultural sector every year since 2013 Over the last 48 hours, at least 24 debt ridden farmers have committed suicide. The Marathwada region in Maharashtra has alone witnessed 452 instances of suicide in the first half of 2018 Despite announcements of loan waivers...

-Livemint.com The concerns about the downsides of these schemes are overblown, and they could go some way in alleviating rural woes Since the Union Budget 2018-19, there has been a great deal of discussion in the public domain regarding the health of the rural sector. We believe that the rural sector needs some policy intervention, be it price support or income support. As a case in point, the agri gross domestic product...

-Financial Express For sustainable growth, Rural India’s squeezing purchasing power needs immediate attention New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) unanimous call for a 25-basis-point rate hike after four years was primarily driven by the strengthening core inflation as well as the rising household inflationary expectations. Since the April Monetary Policy Committee meeting, there have been some significant macro developments, mainly on four counts. First, the global crude oil prices have risen...

-The Indian Express Only 21 per cent of India’s milk production gets processed through the organised sector and the rest passes through unorganised small players. And that’s where the crisis is most intense. Farmers, who had high expectations from the Narendra Modi government, are a disillusioned lot today. Market prices of several crops have remained well below their minimum support prices (MSPs). Moreover, milk prices have fallen by 20 per cent...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...