-The Hindu Alleviating poverty in India requires not only cash transfers but also other enabling changes Advocates of unconditional cash transfers claim that they can be both emancipatory and transformative. They argue that people are quite capable of making rational decisions. And that this kind of basic income support can improve their lives. I have no quarrel with the claim that we must trust the poor. Such suspicion is part of an elite...

-The Hindustan Times India is likely to face a cotton glut this year. The surplus, however, will be of little comfort to suicide-prone and highly indebted farmers, who stare at a sharp drop in earnings - prices are already down 14% compared with last year. The crisis has to do with a slowdown in China, which is forecast to slash by half the amount of cotton it will import this year, most...

-Frontline The problem in rural India is not one of too much credit to poor households that leads to debt waivers that damage bank balance sheets, but one of inadequate access to credit from formal sources. IF Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is to be believed, efforts to help Indian farmers by providing them with cheap(er) credit and relieving them of an unsustainable debt burden only harms them in the...

-The Hindu VIJAYAWADA: There is no need for farmers to commit due to debt burden, if they practise ‘zero-budget natural farming', said Subhash Palekar, organic farming crusader. Addressing farmers from 17 districts in AP and Telangana at a workshop on his model of farming, Mr Palekar said farmers could cultivate 30 acres profitably using farm yard manure generated by one cow or buffalo. The farmers did not need to invest money on...

-Macroscan.com Dr. Rajan's criticism of the debt-waiver scheme for farmers underscores the fact that 'social banking" gets progressively eliminated in the era of neo-liberalism. Please click here to read more. * This article was originally published in the People's Democracy, Vol. XXXIX No. 01, January 04, 2015. ...