-The Hindu Parliamentary panel says there is still a lot of ground to cover A parliamentary committee has said only three States and five Union Territories have become kerosene-free, though the government in September last met the target of eight crore LPG connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. The report of the Parliamentary Committee on Petroleum, which was tabled last week, points to the gap between the continuing use of kerosene and...

-Newsclick.in Directly or indirectly, the government seems uninterested in creating jobs. At a time of widespread and intense concern about the worst unemployment situation in 45 years and all the distress and discontent that accompanies it, one would have expected the Union Government to put job-creation at the top of its priority-list. One of the most obvious and direct ways to do this would be to expand its own schemes and programmes...

-Newsclick.in An opaque policy, inefficiency and a flawed target plague this scheme. Over the past twelve months, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been one of the most-cornered ministers of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, owing largely to her weak and often ambiguous comments on the state of the Indian economy. For her and her supporters, this year’s Union budget was meant to both rejuvenate and rekindle investor’s hopes and sentiments. The...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Union Budget of 2020 is conspicuous by its non-recognition of the ongoing and widely discussed slowdown of the economy, let alone its impact on the different sections of the people. Given the negative growth in employment and consumption in the rural economy, the budget seems like a cruel joke on the plight of the poor, in general, and women, in particular. Instead of measures for boosting...

-TheWire.in Making crop insurance mandatory for loanee farmers provided an attractive deal for insurance companies. Without this, will the business still be viable? This is the first in a two-part series about the changes made to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. On February 19, 2020, the Union Cabinet approved major modifications to the two crop insurance schemes, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS). While...