-The Indian Express A water-scarce region, Bundelkhand has been battling drought, debt and poverty for over a decade. In the past three years, “anna pashu (stray cattle)” has been added to the list, now building up to a serious crisis. The cattle have started endangering the Rabi crop. Hamirpur (Uttar Pradesh): On December 25, to mark former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday with ‘gau sewa’, Uma Kant, the director of BNV...
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Loan: Rs 41,700 Waived: Rs 7 -Arnab Ganguly
-The Telegraph Chandigarh: Farmer Balwinder Singh from Patiala had taken a loan of Rs 41,700 from a cooperative bank. When he received his loan-waiver certificate from the Punjab government on Sunday, the amount waived was mentioned as Rs 7. On a day chief minister Amarinder Singh launched the loan-waiver scheme in Chandigarh to help distressed farmers, many across the state alleged only a fraction of their debts had been written off. While Balwinder...
More »Dismay over IAS salary data void
-PTI New Delhi: A parliamentary panel headed by sidelined BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi has expressed its "strong displeasure" at the government for not providing details of the expenditure incurred on the salaries and allowances of IAS, IPS and other officers. The committee on estimates suggested in a recent report an effective mechanism to assess the contribution of officers from the all-India services to national growth with relation to their emoluments. "The committee...
More »Expect a Budget for angry Bharat -TV Jayan and Rutam Vora
-The Hindu Business Line Falling farm prices, drying up of industrial jobs and lesser MGNREGA work have sharpened rural discontent. The Budget cannot ignore these factors in a year of 8 State polls The year 2017 was roiled by rural discontent. After two consecutive drought years (2014-15 and 2015-16), when agriculture growth plummeted (see table), the countryside was awash with hope after a good monsoon in 2016-17. However, record foodgrain output (272 million...
More »What to expect in 2018 from the farm sector: prices could hold key to several political fortunes -Harish Damodaran & Parthasarathi Biswas
-The Indian Express Agricultural prices crashed in April-June, just when a bumper rabi crop had been harvested after two years of drought, and despite demonetisation. 2017 was agriculture’s annus horribilis. The reason wasn’t monsoon failure (as in 2014 and 2015) or unseasonal rain and hail (as in March 2015); the year was, in fact, largely free of extreme weather events, resulting in a record output of wheat, pulses, cotton, potato and a...
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