-Down to Earth The Union government's claim about being on track to double farmers' income sounds hollow as it has not even spent the allocated budget for agrarian schemes in three of the past five years  On February 28, 2016 Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to double farmers’ income by 2022-23—his gift to the country in its 75th year of independence. In the six years since then, the Union government has not...

-Factly.in The Supplementary Nutrition Programme under ICDS aims to close the nutrition gap among pregnant and breastfeeding mothers as well as children under the age of six. SNP is provided in two ways: Take-Home Rations (THR) and Hot-Cooked Meals at Anganwadi Centres (AWCs).  NITI Aayog’s recent report identifies best practices from states across the Take-Home Rations value chain.  Public policy is often fraught with myriad challenges since they do not have any...

-Down to Earth Sluggish monsoon; area sown down 15%; rural employment stares at meltdown There are disturbing signals of a potential meltdown of the country’s biggest employer and also food producer as the southwest monsoon enters  its second week of the second month. Kharif sowing was down 15 per cent by July 7, in comparison to last year for the same period. Altogether, farmers didn’t sow in 6.3 million hectares (Ha) of farms. Sowing...

-Hindustan Times India has consistently maintained that this position is based on both an erroneous reading of the nature and intent of India’s price support mechanisms and underplays the scale of America’s support to farmers. Washington: As elections for the House of Representatives loom, a group of Republican Congressional representatives from America’s agricultural belt or with agricultural interests have stepped up the rhetoric against India’s agricultural subsidies — alleging that these distort...

-The Telegraph Delhi asks state to recover funds spent on 100 days’ job scheme projects where malpractice was ‘found’ by the Monitoring team Calcutta: The Centre has asked the Bengal government to recover funds spent on 100 days’ job scheme projects where malpractice was “found” by a national-level Monitoring team while making it clear that release of more money under the MGNREGA for 2022-23 financial year may depend on the state’s efforts...