-Odisha Economy Discussion Series-2, April 2019, Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar Purpose – The recently launched KALIA scheme of the Government of Odisha is a massive direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme aimed at improving the condition of around three million farm households along with that of landless cultivators, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and vulnerable households. However, evaluations of the impacts of the scheme are likely to face difficulties in the...

-Down to Earth The method was promoted as low-cost investment on part of farmers, but huge amounts are being raised for statewide implementation Andhra Pradesh has played a leading role in promoting agroecological farming in the past two decades. The Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) initiative of the state is often cited as a major intervention which encouraged farmers to gradually move away from chemical-intensive farming. However, despite such efforts, just 1...

-Hindustan Times The Narendra Modi government’s new agenda for the crisis-ridden farm sector is being geared towards achieving the single goal of doubling agricultural incomes — a legacy of its first term in office. Prime Minister Modi had ambitiously promised a 100% jump in farmers’ incomes between 2017 and 2022, but farmers have been hobbled by unprofitable sales and even negative returns on some crops, as farm produce continue to sell below...

-CaravanMagazine.in India is often hailed for its democracy, for empowering its poor and ordinary citizens to participate in the electoral process and play a role in shaping the country. This narrative has increasingly come under strain since the Supreme Court, through its March 2003 judgment in Union of India vs Association for Democratic Reforms, made it mandatory for candidates contesting elections to disclose their wealth, educational qualification, and criminal cases pending...

-The Hindu The government must put the MCA-21 data under scrutiny and bring transparency in calculating corporate output About a third of non-government non-financial companies in the services sector are not traceable is the finding of a National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey for 2016-17 that has just been released. Since such entities could be shell/fake/bogus companies included in the MCA-21 database of “active” companies used for estimating the gross domestic...