-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-Livemint.com Latest data as per the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Saubhagya scheme shows inconsistencies in the number of rural households in the country The opposition has increasingly questioned the government’s record in rural electrification and alleged frequent shifting of goalposts. For example, the deadline for electrifying all villages now stands at May 2018, after missing the May 2017 target. While available data shows that the Narendra Modi government...

-HowIndiaLives.com/ Livemint.com The number of government employees under UPA I fell 2.7% and under UPA II rose 3.4%. In the four years of NDA, their count is projected to increase 7.2% by 2017-18 For a government whose stated calling card is “minimum government, maximum governance”, for a government battling to create jobs, its own house paints another picture: in four years under this Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the number...

-TheWire.in Even as schemes have received minimal allocations, this budget signals an important shift in the political narrative. Gone is the focus on jobs, skills, aspirations and empowerment. Arun Jaitley had a difficult choice to make this budget. Maintain fiscal prudence or respond to growing demands for public expenditure in light of growing rural distress and at the same time keeping an eye on 2019. He did this today with great panache....

-The Hindu Business Line ‘Green paper’ says Centre has not helped farmers in crisis; net returns at MSP in last four years much lower than under UPA-II New Delhi: Farmer groups on Tuesday termed the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre the most anti-farmer in the history of independent India and said its budgetary announcements were just grandstanding, with little action or money to back them. Bringing out what they...