-Business Standard Most of the allocation would be spent on completion of existing irrigation schemes and their results would only be felt after a gap Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to rely heavily on expanding the country's irrigation network to counter the ill-effects of two consecutive failed Monsoons. Most of the allocation would be spent on completion of existing irrigation schemes and their results would only be felt after a gap. Around 89...

-Livemint.com Spending on irrigation, crop insurance to be doubled; e-platform to be developed for farm produce New Delhi: The government is set to double annual spending on irrigation and crop insurance, and develop a national digital platform for farm produce in order to ensure better prices for farmers, as part of a push to reduce rural distress following the first back-to-back drought in India in three decades. “We’re expecting that the new...

-The Indian Express Total foodgrain production in 2015-16 is expected at 253.16 million tonnes (mt), according to the Agriculture Ministry’s second advance estimates.  India’s agricultural output hasn’t taken as much a hit from back-to-back droughts this time round as with previous monsoon failure episodes. Total foodgrain production in 2015-16 is expected at 253.16 million tonnes (mt), according to the Agriculture Ministry’s second advance estimates. This is only 4.5 per cent below the...

-The Hindu It is only due to the high rates of growth in the services sector that India’s overall economic growth appears robust. The world economy is so hard to predict. In 2008, as the global financial markets plunged into a crisis, high oil prices were considered to be one of the factors that caused it. Today, many fear that the world economy is on the edge of another recession. Guess what...

-The Indian Express The budget is an opportunity for government to address the simmering discontent and disillusion in rural India. The first advance estimates of GDP growth, at 2011-12 constant prices, put the growth for FY16 at 7.6 per cent over the previous year. This is the highest growth rate in the first four years of the forgotten 12th Five-Year Plan. No wonder this makes the Narendra Modi-led NDA government somewhat...