-CaravanMagazine.in What the Modi economy has done to farmers On his way to the prime ministership in 2014, Narendra Modi promised that, if his Bharatiya Janata Party won power, the government would raise the minimum support prices paid for crops such as rice and wheat to guarantee farmers a 50-percent profit on their production costs. The benchmark was first proposed by the Swaminathan Commission, formed in 2004 to address farmers’ economic plight,...

-Counterview.net A letter, addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and prepared by senior activists led by Aruna Roy on behalf of the Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), and signed, among others, by 80 members of Parliament, has regretted that, despite repeated public statements by his government promising employment and job creation that will boost the country’s growth, the country’s only employment guarantee programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

-Scroll.in The former Planning Commission member explains why the country needs to tread carefully on this idea. On January 1, when Indian news agency ANI asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the government’s plans to reduce agrarian distress, he said loan waivers do not work as a very small segment of farmers take loans from banks. “A majority of them take loans from money lenders,” said Modi. “When governments make such announcements,...

-TheWire.in The Price Deficiency Payment Scheme will likely exclude small and marginal farmers, disincentivise efficient farmers and does not have inadequate registration of farmers. The Narendra Modi government announced three new schemes for farmers under one umbrella scheme named PM-AASHA, aimed at ensuring minimum guarantee prices for the farm produce. These three schemes – Price support scheme (PSS), Pilot of Private Procurement & Stockist Scheme (PPPS) and Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS)...

-TheWire.in Real average daily wages improved between 1993-94 and 2011-12, but gains of growth have bypassed casual workers, women and rural areas. Over the past two decades, India became one of the two fastest growing economies in the world, alongside China. The gross domestic product (GDP) has risen four folds since 1993. But has this growth been distributed to lower economic inequality? Has the increase in wages matched the pace of growth...