-Financial Express If panchayat allocations are merged with MGNREGA to aid asset creation, it can trigger infrastructure growth, resulting in extra income and improved conditions. There is a lot of debate around 5% GDP growth and its impact on the organised sector. Although the government has been taking multiple steps to trigger the economy, there is a need to focus on rural India, in terms of optimising of fund allocations and revision...

-The Indian Express India can learn three lessons from China — investing more in agri-R&D and innovations, improving incentives for farmers by carrying out agri-marketing reforms, and collapsing input subsidies into Direct Income Support on per hectare basis. India and China, the world’s most populous countries, have limited arable land — China has about 120 million hectares (mha) and India 156 mha. The challenge before the two countries is to produce...

-The Telegraph While the corporate tax cuts are a long-term positive, this does not dismiss the case for near-term consumption support The government relented on fiscal discipline to steeply reduce corporate taxes on September 20; the lowest is now 17 per cent for new manufacturing units. The stock market soared, seeing earnings grow after successive downgrades for nearly nine years — about the same time as the investment shortfall that lower taxes...

-The Hindu Business Line Noted Gandhian economist Dr Sudarshan Iyengar surveys the distressed agricultural landscape, pinpoints its weaknesses, and prescribes solutions with their roots in Gandhian agronomics. Edited excerpts from an interview to BusinessLine: * Given the agrarian crisis in India today, how relevant are Gandhi's economic principles based on the village economy, and equitable distribution of resources? They are relevant in the context of Gandhi's view of gram swaraj (village self-rule), which...

-The Indian Express Government could give fertiliser subsidy directly to farmers and let them decide if they want to practise zero budget natural farming or use chemical-fertilisers. The Narendra Modi government completed 100 days of its second term (Modi 2.0) last week. On this occasion, most cabinet ministers spoke of the achievements of their ministries. The headlines in newspapers were, however, about the abrogation of Article 370, or the biggest slump...