-Economic and Political Weekly Direct benefi t transfers in the form of cash cannot replace the supply of food through the public distribution system. Though it is claimed otherwise, DBT does not address the problems of identifying the poor ("targeting") and DBT in place of the PDS will expose the vulnerable to additional price fluctuation. Further, if the PDS is dismantled, there will also be no need or incentive for procurement...

-Business Standard Subsidised farm credit also goes to companies There has been a massive surge in institutional agricultural credit over the past decade. But the benefit of that has not reached as much to farmers as it has to agri-businesses and companies branching out into agriculture-related activities. This is clear from an analytical study of agricultural credit by scholars at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, based on a Reserve Bank of...

-The Hindu Business Line This is result of lacklustre credit growth to India Inc and tough priority sector lending norms Credit growth in the banking system continues to languish below the 10 per cent mark, far lower than the 14 per cent seen a year back. But there is one segment that has managed to grow faster than last year - loans to the agriculture sector. These grew 16.5 per cent in...

-The Asian Age The much-quoted sentence, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics", was attributed to the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli by American author Mark Twain. Although researchers could never find such a statement in any written work of Disraeli, the sentence gained universal popularity to signify how economists and other number-crunchers use the "persuasive power" of figures to make a political point or...

-The Telegraph The 2015-16 budget was presented to the Lok Sabha by the finance minister on February 28, 2015. The first half of the 2015 budget session of both Houses of Parliament has just ended. The highlight was the passing of a number of bills and the budget debate. The debate on the budget in the Rajya Sabha was a long one, lasting over 10 hours. Several speakers participated, drawn from...