-Down to Earth Lowest amount of rainfall in the last decade; climate change to blame, says Met Paddy cultivation in Jharkhand this Kharif season has taken a huge hit, with most farmers expecting a meagre yield. Monsoon 2022 saw a massive deficit in rainfall — the lowest in the last 10 years.  “I doubt I can harvest even a kilogramme of yield this year,” Mahendra Prasad told Down To Earth. The farmer in...

-Down to Earth Hurdles in availing financial support under Nikshay Poshan Yojana will exacerbate India’s tuberculosis crisis Only two-thirds of people living with tuberculosis benefitted from the Union government’s sole nutrition support scheme last year, highlighting bottlenecks in the fight against a major public health concern. The Nikshay Poshan Yojana entitles every tuberculosis (TB) patient, seeking treatment in either the public or private sector, to a direct benefit transfer (DBT) of Rs 500...

-IndiaToday.in From Assam to Odisha and in many other states, floods were a natural phenomenon. But we turned them into monsoon mayhem by squeezing our rivers. Here is why we must rethink our response to this annual crisis. Every monsoon, lakhs of people in Indian states such as Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are affected by floods when rivers swell and spread their waters amid pounding rain. Hundreds of men,...

-The Hindu Business Line Experts say current manual methods are error-prone, moot scientific process The advance crop estimate made by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare usually differs between the first and subsequent three ones before it comes out with the final estimate. However, the difference has seldom caused problems in the agricultural markets or led to complaints of not reflecting what the trade has felt is the ground reality. But some...

Are public sector banks (PSBs) important for the economy? Have the PSBs served the purpose for which they were created? Could the PSBs compete efficiently against the private sector banks (PVBs)? These are some of the questions, which have been answered by a chapter in the RBI Bulletin's August edition. Efficiency of PSBs Co-authored by Snehal S Herwadkar, Sonali Goel, and Rishuka Bansal (2022) of the Banking Research Division, Reserve Bank of...