Situation alarming: More than one-third population hit by drought The country is facing severe drought for the second consecutive year. Conservative estimates from official sources show that over a quarter of rural habitations are facing drinking water scarcity. Although both India Meteorological Department and Skymet have predicted a more than normal rainfall during June-September, 2016, the water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country has declined from 22 percent...
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Slump in Agricultural Exports a Threat for Government’s Vision for Farmers -Sudhakar Gummula
-TheWire.com The government wants to double farmer incomes by 2022, a feat that it cannot achieve without seriously tackling the current slump that has a direct impact on the sale of farming products. As part of its recent budget, the central government announced its aim to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. To this end, the state of Agricultural Exports is an important factor which needs attention, as it creates an additional demand...
More »Job growth at a snail’s pace -Santosh Mehrotra
-The Hindu For jobs to grow, consumer demand has to improve consistently. This can only happen with an industrial policy, which India has not had since 1991 There will be no demographic dividend without growth in industrial and service sector jobs. The underlying logic behind a dividend is that as jobs grow, incomes rise and so do savings. Based on higher savings, the investment rate to GDP grows, resulting in faster GDP...
More »Farm distress: Monsoon isn’t the only spoiler -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Why the revival of exports matters as much as rains for Indian farmers. It is generally held that the woes of Indian farmers today have had largely to do with extreme weather events. The southwest monsoon failed in both 2014 and 2015. Besides, we had extensive crop damage from unseasonal rain and hailstorms over large parts of north, west and central India in March 2015. From this also follows the...
More »In fact: There is a drought in many parts of India. Why hasn’t it been noticed? -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Because this time, it’s only rural producers, not urban consumers, who are feeling the heat This time’s drought has been a most unusual one. Even with three consecutive bad crops (kharif 2014, rabi 2015, and kharif 2015) and a fourth not-so-great one (thankfully, there’s been no big damage from the unseasonal rain and hail unlike in March 2015), annual consumer food price inflation is only 5.3 per cent. In the...
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