-The Hindu Business Line   Input subsidy expenses not contributing to boost productivity The World Bank has said that South Asia's foodgrain stock management, especially in India, needs to improve to tackle inflation. In its focus on food inflation in South Asia, the bank said that high stocks have led to high wastage due to inadequate storage capacity and technology. According to World Bank's estimates, the Food Corporation of India lost 10-16 million tonnes...

IN preparing the approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission engaged “all interested persons” in the country in a wide, web-based consultative exercise and also involved a varied group of “stakeholders”. The resulting document clearly indicates some awareness of the complex problems likely to be faced by the economy in the coming period. But it falls short of expectations because it does not provide a cohesive...

“MGNREGS should move from relief work mode to one that blends natural resources and labour” to build productive assets The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), which went into hibernation in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson's absence, has been reactivated. On September 14, it despatched its recommendations on strengthening the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to the government; it wants the scheme to move from its “relief work...

-IANS   Nearly nine million Indian households, or 45 million individuals, saw their incomes rise above the threshold of $1.25 a day, or Rs.56, in the two decades ended 2010, reflecting the success of microfinance, says a survey. "A dramatic number of families moved out of poverty between 1990 and 2010," said the report, based on a survey of more than 15,000 Indian households, carried out by the India Development Foundation (IDF), a...

-The Business Standard   Among the many initiatives and innovations being considered to improve returns to farming, the creation of producers’ companies deserves closer policy attention than has been the case so far. A farmers’ company, registered as a corporate entity with the registrar of companies, under the Companies Act, can help farm producers come together and derive economies of scope and scale. A group of farmers in Andhra Pradesh has reportedly...