According to the United Nations, about 1.2 billion people around the world are living under water scarcity and another 500 million are approaching that situation. More importantly, approximately 1.5 billion people will face an ‘absolute’ water scarcity by 2025. Due to changing climatic condition...
At the far end of the lawn in the Agri Horticultural Society of India’s (AHSI) premise in Alipore, Kolkata, the crowd seems to thicken. The inauguration of the organisation’s bicentenary celebration has just concluded and a young girl accompanying her mother to the event is heard pleading, “Mo...
The Agri Horticultural Society of India (AHSI) recently celebrated its bicentenary year by hosting the Bicentennial Flower Show and the World Regional Rose Convention 2020. Those present included Henrianne de Briey, President, World Federation of Rose Societies (WFRS). More than 300 delegates and ro...
The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-Kisan) was announced by the then Union Minister of Finance, Piyush Goyal during the 2019 Interim Union Budget. The PM-Kisan scheme promises payment of Rs 6000 to each farmer family every year in three instalments. This scheme was meant to provid...
Efficacy of subsidy to farmers, rich or poor, has been a long and important matter of controversy among economists and policy makers not only in India but also in most countries of the world. In India many experts believe in lessening subsidy to agriculture and instead enhancement of investment in s...
For decades, generations of farmer communities have been at the receiving end of adverse conditions in every aspect of their trade – shortage of funds, inclement weather, unscrupulous financiers and middlemen, and bad debts, among others. Traditionally, agriculture has always been the backbone of ...
It is a common misconception that any sort of agricultural development programme in India only means increase in production level helping the poor and marginal farmers by several government initiatives. To supply the farmers cheap inputs, enhancement of irrigation facilities, cheap loans, developmen...
The state of Gujarat has extended the best technologies to farmers and has given them access to markets. There have been many admirers of Gujarat’s “agrarian miracle” when Narendra Modi was the state’s Chief Minister. Gujarat’s agri-GDP registered an unprecedented growth of 8% during 2002-...
India’s growth story cannot be complete without a truthful representation of its rural economy. The latest Census report, released in 2011 stated that around 73% of Indian households were rural and this can be seen as an indicator of its rural extant and the report establishes that India is still ...
The agriculture sector is expected to do well this year. But despite a normal monsoon, the total area sown in the country has decreased by 0.6% compared to last year. The gross value added (GVA) in agriculture has been plummeted to 0.3% in the first quarter of the present FY18 (April-June) in spite ...
