-The Indian Express To address farmers' woes, we need a multi-pronged strategy of income support, government investment, and institutional innovations, and not a one-size-fits-all approach. The two main policy interventions repeatedly discussed in recent months to tackle farmer distress — loan waivers and minimum support prices (MSP) — treat all farmers (large/small, male/female) alike. But farmers are heterogeneous. They differ especially by income, land owned and gender. And farmer dissatisfaction is...

-Livemint.com Given the over-optimistic revenue estimates and under-budgeted expenditure, the FinMin’s budget projections should be taken with a pinch of salt Dark clouds are gathering over the fiscal horizon. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will table an interim budget on 1 February—just weeks before India goes to polls. There’s a growing consensus among analysts that the government will miss its revenue target for the year, largely because the collections from the goods and services...

-The Indian Express As there are 21.6 crore small and marginal farmers — most of whom are not in a position to repay the loan or put collateral — such a scheme is the only way to support their fund requirements, apart from ensuring market prices for their produce. Mumbai: The NDA government is considering a package of proposals for the distressed agriculture sector that includes interest-free loans, loans without collateral...

-The Telegraph Our public discourse should be informed by economic theory that is free of obfuscations For some time now there has been a debate in the country that is as esoteric as it is misleading, namely whether the Reserve Bank of India’s reserves should be drawn down by the government to Finance its expenditure. On the one side, the argument is that if the government has to undertake extra expenditure, then, other...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...