-The Indian Express The central government’s package, as it is, comes a week after Kerala first announced a Rs 20,000-crore support for its people. Many states including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Telangana and Rajasthan followed suit. The Rs 1.7 lakh crore economic package announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for the vulnerable sections — farmers, women, construction workers, senior citizens, widows and the disabled — is less than 1 per cent of...
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Anxiety In MP, Punjab: Lockdown puts question mark on wheat procurement -Milind Ghatwai & Anju Agnihotri Chaba
-The Indian Express Nearly 19 lakh farmers had registered themselves on the MP government’s e-Uparjan procurement portal between February 1 and 28. Bhopal, Jalandhar: First it was over two weeks of political uncertainty and now it is the 21-day lockdown to combat COVID-19 that is giving anxious moments to the lakhs of wheat growers in Madhya Pradesh. Procurement of their produce —farmers in the state have sown a record 79.68 lakh hectares under...
More »Has the Finance Minister Pulled a Fast One on MNREGA Workers? -Jean Drèze
-TheWire.in It appears that the Rs 20 bonus is nothing more than an approximate average of the state-specific increases notified by the rural development ministry on March 23. The relief package announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday is more than a trifle misleading as far as provisions for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) workers are concerned. Please click here to read more. ...
More »State’s measures to fight coronavirus are stripping the poor of dignity and hope -Harsh Mander
-The Indian Express Harsh Mander writes: The Indian government found it fit to charter planes with medical staff to fly in migrants from other countries. But it felt no responsibility at all to the millions of migrants stranded without work and food in every corner of the country. I won’t die of corona. Before that, I will surely die of hunger”. I heard this lament more than a dozen times from different...
More »Food and agriculture during a pandemic: Managing the consequences -Sudha Narayanan
-IdeasforIndia.in In this post, Sudha Narayanan provides a sense of current bottlenecks in the supply chains of food and agricultural produce, and makes recommendations for government action to get these back on track quickly. A critical fallout of the lockdown following the novel coronavirus pandemic has been a combination of confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety for farmers and consumers alike as to what lies in store in the coming weeks. There are reports from...
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