-The Indian Express “What Lodhi and Mughal dynasties or the Britishers did not do to us (tribals), the Indian Government is doing today through force of law. Schedule V of the Constitution is in our favour, but not in a single state it has been implemented with full effect,” Jayant Munda said. Jharkhand-based social activist Jayant Munda, who is the son of tribal leader and Constituent Assembly member Jaipal Singh Munda,...

-The Indian Express The unprecedented procurement of pulses and oilseeds in the last couple of years has created problems — and opportunities. If there’s one area in agriculture where the Narendra Modi Government has probably broken fresh ground, it is in the procurement of pulses and oilseeds.   During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 agricultural years (July-June), the Central agencies — National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed), Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC)...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...

-TheWire.in In an interview with The Wire, former secretary to the Government of India P.S. Krishnan says economically weaker sections require financial aid, not reservation. P.S. Krishnan, the former secretary to Government of India, was one of the crucial people behind the enactment of several historic laws regarding social justice. The current Bill proposed by the Government to provide reservation to economically weaker upper castes in jobs and education, he says, violates...

-The Telegraph The Mamata Banerjee Government claims that its khadya sathi food scheme has eliminated hunger Calcutta: A study carried out by the Pratichi Institute and the Asiatic Society has found out that a significant proportion of tribal people in Bengal had faced “food scarcity of varying degrees” in the past one year. The finding drills holes into Mamata Banerjee Government’s claims that its policy of cheap food grain supply, known as khadya...