Against the backdrop of the Finance Minister Shri Piyush Goyal announcing the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PMKSN) programme during his budget speech on 1st February, 2019, it becomes essential to differentiate between 12.56 crore operational holding households (enumerated, as per the Agriculture Census) and 13.33 crore ownership holding households (estimated, as per the 70th round National Sample Survey report no. 571) pertaining to size upto 2 hectares. In his budget...

-Vikalp.ind.in During the past three and half decades, various governments at the centre introduced several crop insurance schemes for the farmers to lessen the risks (partial or full) involved due to natural calamities and crop diseases. In 1985, in its very first attempt, the Government of India (GoI) launched Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS) with a mandate to a national coverage. In 1999, CCIS was replaced with a new scheme called...

-Hindustan Times The basic principle of the constitutional order on which the Indian State runs is there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion. By prioritising people from certain religions - primarily Hindus - and explicitly excluding one particular community - Muslims - the amendment appears to legitimise the idea that India is fundamentally a Hindu State. The Citizenship Amendment Bill — which provides for the grant of Indian citizenship...

-Newsclick.in The Interim Budget granted a paltry Rs 500 per month to farmers as relief, fund cuts for dalits, adivasis and minorities, and was silent on agricultural and industrial workers. It was the theatre of absurd in the Lok Sabha on Friday as replacement Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the Interim Budget through an election speech, tom-tomming the so-called achievements of the Narendra Modi government over the past five years, offering an...

-Scroll.in This is not just about low job creation but also about the worsening quality of jobs, says Himanshu, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. On Thursday, a political storm boiled over after Business Standard reported that, between 2017-’18, unemployment numbers in India reached a 45-year high. The newspaper based its report on a survey, conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, called the Periodic Labour Force Survey that the government had...