-The Hindu Business Line Falling farm prices, drying up of industrial jobs and lesser MGNREGA work have sharpened rural discontent. The Budget cannot ignore these factors in a year of 8 State polls The year 2017 was roiled by rural discontent. After two consecutive drought years (2014-15 and 2015-16), when agriculture growth plummeted (see table), the countryside was awash with hope after a good monsoon in 2016-17. However, record foodgrain output (272 million...
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Why farmers don't have electoral clout -Avik Saha and Yogendra Yadav
-Down to Earth Although farmers vote at least as much, if not more than industrial workers or urban middle classes, elections are not fought around farmers' issues Elections are about numbers. Democratic politics is about stitching together a majority. So, the larger a group, the bigger is its “vote bank”, and greater is its electoral clout. A social group that constitutes a majority can therefore dictate its terms in an electoral democracy....
More »India's Millets Makeover: Set To Reach Poor, School Meals -Charu Bahri
-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include coarse grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...
More »CGSCSC distribution module gets implemented at 120 warehouses
-The Pioneer Raipur: The Chhattisgarh State Civil Supplies Corporation’s (CGSCSC) distribution centre module is now implemented at 120 warehouses of 108 distribution centres in the State, officials informed. The stocks and sales figures of previous month of all the Fair Price Shops (FPSs) are entered into this module and the actual amount of PDS commodities to be issued to FPS is calculated by this web based software and delivery order and truck...
More »Govt paid Rs 6,300 per babu for health, but only Rs 1,100 for aam aadmi -Rema Nagarajan
-The Times of India If what the central government spends on providing healthcare for its own employees is a measure of what decent healthcare costs, what governments (central and states put together) spend for the ordinary citizen is a paltry sixth of that amount. The recently released National Health Accounts (NHA) 2014-15 shows that the average government spend per citizen per year was just Rs 1,108, against almost Rs 6,300 per...
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