-The New Indian Express GUNTUR: Subhash Palekar, inventor of Zero Budget Spiritual Farming, conducted an awareness programme on natural farming methods for farmers at KSPR Stadium in Narasaraopet on Tuesday. He exhorted farmers to opt for natural farming as it helps reduce their cultivation costs and achieve higher yield. He felt that ryot suicides due to debt burden could be checked by promoting natural farming in a big way in the...

-The Indian Express Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar says Maharashtra is a huge state and there are ways to raise the funds Mumbai: The Maharashtra government will have to provide Rs 1.14 lakh crore to write off the entire loan burden of all 1.36 crore farmers in Maharashtra, stoking concerns given the state’s debt burden of Rs 4 lakh crore. Highly placed sources said the state budget for 2017-18 was Rs 2.57 lakh...

-The Indian Express Devendra Fadnavis said, “The loan waiver, which will come into force by October 31, 2017, will be restricted to small and marginal farmers with land holdings of five acres.” Pune: In the face of spiralling protests across Maharashtra, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday announced a farm loan waiver of Rs 30,000 crore, the biggest such write-off for farmers in the state. But by afternoon, it was clear that...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Over two decades after midday meals were introduced in city schools, one out of every three children studying in a municipal school is malnourished, an RTI reply has revealed. The data showed that undernourishment of students in these schools is accelerating with the incidence showing a four-fold jump over the last three years. In the same period, the utilization of midday meal budget fell from 81% to...

-Livemint.com One-off gains from Income Disclosure Scheme 2016 call for scepticism about any immediate claims of demonetisation having widened India’s income tax net News reports have quoted government officials making claims about a record increase in the number of income tax payers in 2016-17. Should such claims be seen as a success of demonetisation in forcing unscrupulous individuals to become a part of income tax net? An analysis of direct tax collection...