-The Indian Express How unpaid labour by women subsidises the Indian economy The latest time-use survey on women’s and men’s work has just been released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), albeit 20 years after the first time-use survey was conducted. We must congratulate the NSSO for successfully completing this survey as this was much needed. Some startling findings have emerged regarding the work done by men and women — the...

-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...

-The Indian Express Advisors urged fiscal push in form of wage subsidy, rural infrastructure Speaking to The Indian Express on September 26, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that she is open to “the need for further stimulus” and its timing. That may not be much of an assurance given the growing sense of disquiet in expert bodies including the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the Niti Aayog and the Chief Economic Advisor’s...

-The Tribune With APMC markets heading towards a collapse, the new set of reforms is aimed at encouraging corporatisation, with big business moving into agriculture, storage and marketing. As the experience of US/Europe shows, when unregulated markets become dominant, small farmers are the first to be pushed out of agriculture. Reiterating what former US Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz (during Ronald Reagan’s rule) had declared: “Get big or get out,” Sonny Perdue, US...

-The Hindu As of Sunday, around ₹7.5 crore in cash credited into the bank accounts of 20,500 ineligible beneficiaries had been recovered VILLUPURAM: The Department of Agriculture has identified as many as 90,000 ineligible beneficiaries under the PM-KISAN Nidhi scheme in the district and recovered ₹7.5 crore so far. A senior official on anonymity said that out of the 90,000 ineligible beneficiaries, as many as 38,000 were from Villupuram district while 60,000 were...