-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government's spending on the rural job scheme increased 10 per cent in the last fiscal despite a matching decline in the number of beneficiaries because of deletion, challenging claims that weeding out bogus card-holders helped cut down on expenditure and pointing to the lack of jobs in rural areas. After verification, the government struck off the names of 1.62 crore job card-holders under the Mahatma Gandhi National...
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Telangana, farmers' union make a pitch for non-Bt cotton seeds -KV Kurmanath
-The Hindu Business Line Urge growers to stay away from illegal Bt3 seeds Hyderabad: With the kharif season fast approaching, the Telangana government and farmers’ union have launched independent campaigns to discourage people from illegal bio-tech cotton seeds or Roundup Ready Flex seeds. The third generation seed technology developed by Monsanto gives cotton plants protection against glyphosate, which is sprayed to kill the weed. Though the technology doesn’t have permissions in the country,...
More »New MSP may drive up farmer income by 24% -Dipak K Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prices available to farmers for their harvest could increase by about 15% as a result of the budget announcement to hike the Minimum Support Price (MSP), according to an estimate prepared by government’s think tank Niti Aayog. This is likely to raise the income of farmers by 24%, it has projected. While proposing three options in a draft document titled “Ensuring MSP Benefits to Farmers”, the...
More »Soon, real-time e-database of ration cards to weed out fakes -Dipak K Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The central government will soon set up a real-time online database of ration cards and the beneficiaries under the national food security scheme to end any possibility of anyone procuring a fake or more than one ration card from any part of the country. The system will also enable lakhs of migrant workers to get subsidised foodgrains irrespective of the place from where the cards...
More »In Fact: Why India doesn't lose forest cover -Jay Mazoomdaar
-The Indian Express Despite deforestation and human encroachment, the country’s forest cover has remained stable around 20% since Independence. This is because the loss of natural old-growth forests is compensated on paper by expanding monoculture plantations. Since Independence, a fifth of India’s land has consistently been under forests. The population has increased more than three times since 1947, and from 1951-80, a total 42,380 sq km of forestland was diverted — some...
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