-The Indian Express Karnataka’s experience shows success depends on taking along all stakeholders. The government of India launched the National Agricultural Market Scheme in July 2015 in 585 markets and has, since April 14, started e-trading on the platform. This is in line with the Union Budget’s target to double farmers’ incomes in six years. To be sure, a doubling of incomes by 2022 would require them to grow at an annual...

-Business Standard Instead of addressing systemic problems in agriculture, farm politics in the state is about how much money the government can offer the farmer as a dole The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), led by Parkash Singh Badal and son Sukhbir, was in a dilemma a year before the 2012 Assembly elections in Punjab. The Akalis had ruled Punjab since 2007 but no party had ever returned to power for a second...

-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-Livemint.com The government relies on for-profit big business to deliver public goods despite their inability to deliver Can we listen to the budget as an annual public statement by the government of its economic and social philosophy and intent? The centre abandoned five-year plans that earlier laid down a road map of where government policies are headed. The budget, then, is an important reality check of whether the government is literally...