-Financial Express For sustainable growth, Rural India’s squeezing purchasing power needs immediate attention New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) unanimous call for a 25-basis-point rate hike after four years was primarily driven by the strengthening core inflation as well as the rising household inflationary expectations. Since the April Monetary Policy Committee meeting, there have been some significant macro developments, mainly on four counts. First, the global crude oil prices have risen...

-The Hindu Farmers may be hit as NITI Aayog proposal on shifting burden to States delays decision The monsoon has arrived in northern India and is expected to cover the whole country in the next few days, but farmers are still waiting for the announcement of the minimum support prices (MSP) for major crops. The Modi government had promised that this year the MSPs would be set at least 50% higher than production...

-The Hindu The GST’s faulty design has prevented the economy from benefiting fully from the indirect tax regime A year ago, at a special midnight session in Parliament, the launch of the goods and services tax (GST) was heralded as the new freedom. A year on, what has the GST achieved? ? One should not expect instant results. There will be many short comings when a complex reform is rolled out. But...

-The Hindu Income support must be provided to at least the most vulnerable farmers Our farm policy is so bad, the proverb ‘you reap what you sow’ isn’t true any longer. A bumper crop is no different from a drought, for it too depresses farm incomes. Good rains, excessive sowing and the bumper harvest last year produced gluts in the market that sent the prices of many crops, and therefore farm incomes, crashing....

-TheNewsMinute.com Water is a resource that will never run out, they say; but its scarcity has been the undoing of many families in Kadiri, a town in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. Anantapur district has seen varying degrees of drought for many years now. Barren lands and wilting crops are a common sight in these parts. The sun beats down on you and wears you out, and there is no water in...