The Financial Express

In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of seed has to be repaid duguna or twice the quantity. The grain given in repayment may not fetch the same price as seed, but could be 1.6 times the value, for a four-month period. Such transactions are more like wealth transfer operations.

The Indian Express

The first advanced estimates of GDP growth for the financial year 2016-2017 (FY17) show a marginal decline from 7.6 per cent last year to 7.1 per cent this year. Of the various sectors, gross value added at basic prices (2011-12), mining and quarrying is down from 7.4 per cent to minus (-)1.8 per cent; manufacturing from 9.3 per cent to 7.4 per cent, construction from 3.9 per cent to 2.9 per cent; trade, hotels, transport, communication from 9 per cent to 6 per cent and financial, real estate and professional services from 10.3 per cent to 9 per cent. The sector that shows a big increase — from 6.6 per cent to 12.8 per cent — is ...

DNA

Move over onion, it’s tomato’s turn to make you cry now. As India celebrates the triumph over black money and corruption, farmers in Jharkhand are grief-struck that their freshly harvested tomatoes fetch just around 50 paise per kg (Rs 50 per quintal in wholesale market). They blame it on the bumper crop (due to good rains this season), and dump the produce as the price it fetches is not even meeting the cost of transportation.

The Pioneer

The Indian agricultural sector has definitely grown by leaps and bounds in the past years. However, the revolution ushered in during the late 20th and early 21st century has been noteworthy, despite being sporadic to a few selected crops or regions. Ensued by such hitches, the sector’s growth with sustenance has been moderate. Marking the beginning of agricultural reformations in 1991, the overall growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) was around three per cent per annum, with some thick and thin experiences in the sector.