-The Hindu Over 17,260 persons in Uttar Pradesh get relief of just Rs. 1,000 or less Over 17,260 farmers in Uttar Pradesh have received loan waiver certificates for only Rs. 1,000 or less under a scheme in which the BJP government had promised to waive farm loans of up to Rs. 1 lakh. Of the 17,262 farmers, 4,814 got loan waivers of amounts between Rs. 1 and Rs. 100, while 6,895 received...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's growth juggernaut has started to lose steam. In the mid-year Economic Survey, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian flagged big risks to economic growth and fiscal targets while asserting that the country had entered a "new phase of relatively low, possibly very low, inflation". In the first volume of the survey published in January, the government had forecast GDP growth in the range of 6.75 to 7.5 per cent...

-The Indian Express   Niti Aayog proposal for privatising public hospitals is ill-designed, driven by ideology more than welfare The corporate hospitals have been resting their gaze on public hospitals for long: Land, doctors and patients. Finally, in the Niti Aayog, they have found a sympathetic collaborator. As per media reports, the Aayog is all set to push states to privatise well functioning district hospitals in the Tier 2 and 3...

-The Indian Express The failure of populist rural credit schemes stems primarily from poor understanding of farm indebtedness in the first place. From the 1970s, a lot of private investment in tube-well irrigation, farm mechanisation and allied agricultural activities took place with bank credit support. After the establishment of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982, institutional credit flows not only accelerated, but also exhibited diversification to fund livestock...

-The Hindu Strengthening the repayment capacity of farmers by improving and stabilising their income is the only way to keep them out of distress Indian agriculture is characterised by low scale and low productivity. About 85% of the operational landholdings in the country are below 5 acres and 67% farm households survive on an average landholding of one acre. More than half of the area under cultivation does not have access to...