-The Times of India • What does the Finance Commission do? In India’s federal structure, taxation powers and obligations for various services — like law and order, health, education — are unequally shared between the Centre and the states. Hence, the Constitution mandates the setting up of a Finance Commission (FC) every five years to recommend how revenues from central taxes should be shared between the Centre and the states. A fair...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Giving direct income support (DIS) to farmers — similar to what Telangana recently launched — may be a better option than the price deficiency payment (PDP) scheme or higher minimum support price (MSP) to address farm distress, according to a new study. Paying higher MSP based on cost-plus pricing would lead to market distortion. PDP schemes such as Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), which was in force...

-The Financial Express Increasing farm productivity alone will not help raise farmers’ income and may even be detrimental. the need is to diversify farmers’ sources of income. One of the most important statements made in recent times by the government was the declaration of its intention to double farmers’ income by 2022. The statement of prime minister Narendra Modi in Bareilly on February 28, 2016, must have made the farmers leap with...

-Hindustan Times The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or coarse cereal production, mostly grown by small and poor farmers New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has decided to include millets in the public distribution system for which it is procuring these grains at federally fixed minimum support prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said. The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or...

-The Hindu Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on increasing inequality within several countries of the world, including India, particularly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. It is true that rising inequality has adverse economic and social consequences. The Gini coefficient or other measures of inequality are being...