-Hindustan Times In an effort to relieve farmers’ economic distress, the Centre included in the Union Budget an increase in the minimum support price (MSP) for monsoon crops and pledged Rs 500 crore to Operation Greens, a programme to help growers of tomatoes, onions, and potatoes. New Delhi: The benefits from the Union Budget’s concessions to agriculture will not be shared equally among Indian farmers. Dalits, in particular, may lose out on the...

-The Indian Express India’s economy is not doing well. Only carefully crafted policy reforms can turn it around The Indian government recently lowered its economic growth forecast for 2017-18 to 6.5 per cent, and there is reason to be concerned. That the economy would suffer a slowdown after demonetisation was inevitable, as all professional economists could see. But growth dropping to 5.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent in, respectively, the first...

  Budgetary allocation to a particular sector indicates how much priority the government assigns to that sector as compared to the rest. A preliminary analysis by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicates that the actual expenditure (net of receipts and recoveries) by two of the country’s most important ministries, namely the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) was less than 1 percent...

-Down to Earth Income inequality makes agrarian crisis challenging; inequality is worse among farmers than the formal economy Economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty recently concluded after a long study that inequality is at its peak in India. It is embedded in popular conscience: “Top 1 per cent of earners captured 22 per cent of total income in the country.” Their study–covering consumption, government accounts and income tax data from 1922...

-Down to Earth Government reports say 2004-14 had the highest agriculture growth that has fast slipped back to near-zero growth despite normal monsoons and bumper yields The National Democratic Alliance government is scrambling to rescue the agriculture sector from a crisis never seen before. On January 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met over 100 economists in a first ever such interaction. Agriculture, rural economy and unemployment dominated the discussions. Modi’s promise of...