-Business Standard Govt should revamp agricultural marketing to increase farmers' earnings and amend land-leasing laws Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has met farm sector representatives for pre-Budget consultations at a time Indian agriculture is passing through a bad patch - especially because of two years of consecutive drought. Predictably, therefore, most participants pitched for more credit on soft terms, higher minimum support prices (MSP) for crops and the expansion of irrigation facilities to...

-Business Standard Chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian discusses the Budget, goods and services tax, Centre-state relationship and larger issues facing the economy with Dilasha Seth, Arup Roychoudhury and Indivjal Dhasmana. Edited excerpts: * In the mid-year economic analysis, you talked of revisiting the fiscal numbers for 2016-17. Is it a view of the chief economic advisor (CEA) or that of the government? I see my role as a member of the government. I...

-Business Standard In November, the government decides to transfer Rs 4.5 a quintal production incentive to bank accounts of sugarcane farmers Two months ago, the Centre after much deliberation decided to transfer Rs 4.50 a quintal directly into the bank accounts of sugarcane growers. The government called this a production incentive, but it is seen by many as an attempt to kill several birds with one stone. An incentive directly transferred into the...

-Hindustan Times If you are a fence sitter on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MNREGA), not sure whether it is good or bad, here is data to confuse you some more. As payments for jobs under the scheme remain sluggish, there has been a 60% increase in households registering for the programme in the August to November period this year. The higher registration of households is expected to push...

-The Hindu All govt departs and ministries have been asked to provide electronic options for all payments and receipts by March 31, 2016. The Prime Minister’s Office has set an ambitious target to shift at least 90% of all government transactions that involve payments or receipts from citizens and businesses to electronic or paperless mode by the end of 2016, replacing the use of cash, demand drafts, cheques and challans in government...