-Down to Earth Mounting expenses, under-provisioning of food subsidy budget leading to a huge debt is highly worrisome A fiscal crisis has been brewing in the last few years. Mounting food subsidy arrears — payable to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) due to ‘under-provisioning’ of food subsidy expenses in successive union budgets — has forced FCI to take loans to finance its operations. FCI is the central agency that manages procurement, storage...
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Explained: Why it’s an underestimate to say only 6% farmers benefit from MSP -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express The actual number could be anywhere between 15 per cent and 25 per cent. “Only 6% of Indian farmers benefit from minimum support prices (MSP)”. So widely-quoted is this figure — especially in the context of the recently-passed Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act — that it has become a factoid or even truism. What is, isn’t counted The apparent source of the 6% figure is the Shanta...
More »Farm bills: India’s fields are on fire -Devinder Sharma
-The Telegraph The tearing hurry with which agriculture market reforms have been pushed through, without even consulting farmers, has resulted in huge farm protests in Punjab and Haryana At a time when I see euphoria among mainstream economists over the new set of agricultural reforms, media reports say that the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices has observed that only 12 per cent of India’s paddy cultivators were able to sell their...
More »Farm bill 2020: actual text vs perception -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill: The government has sought to project the farm Bill as “creating an ecosystem” where farmers will enjoy the “freedom of choice” to sell to anyone, anywhere in the country. On many occasions, it isn’t the law but what it appears to convey and the context in which it is framed that holds relevance. This certainly is the case with the...
More »Why MSP scare: Wheat farmers availing it double in 5 years, paddy up 70 per cent -Harikishan Sharma
-The Indian Express The data was shared with Rajya Sabha Friday by Raosaheb Patil Danve, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, who gave a written reply to an unstarred question. The number of wheat farmers who availed the minimum support price (MSP) has doubled in the last five years, while the number of such paddy farmers has increased by 70 per cent during the same period, according to...
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