-Livemint.com While farmers will receive a 12% penal interest payment for delays in settling claims, state governments will be penalised if they delay in depositing their share of subsidies New Delhi: Faced with a sharp decline in the number of farmers signing up for its flagship crop insurance scheme, the centre on Tuesday imposed a 12% penalty on insurance companies for delayed settlement of claims. Under the new guidelines that will take effect...

-Down to Earth For every million rupees spent on agricultural research, 328 people are pulled out of poverty. In contrast, the same amount spent on power subsidies brings only 23 people come out of poverty. The message is clear. With the Union elections only a few months away, the Centre should prioritise capital investments over populist subsidies to deliver on its promise of strengthening the farm sector. This is important, especially when the...

-Livemint.com Roots of disagreement lie in how farm support is calculated under WTO, with US blaming India for under-reporting subsidy given for wheat and rice Bengaluru: farm subsidies seem to have become a major flashpoint in the escalating global trade war. In May, India came under attack from the US for its minimum support price (MSP) policy for foodgrain. India hit back, along with China, to demand that developed nations give up...

-PTI The US has alleged that India is providing massive subsidies to its farmers producing rice and wheat and said that other countries need to be concerned about New Delhi's "trade distorting policy". Chief Agricultural Negotiator Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) Gregory Doud made the comments during a Congressional hearing Thursday. "Every rice- or wheat-producing country around the world should be concerned about the trade effects of India's trade distorting domestic...

-The Indian Express The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims to identify the causes behind the farm crisis in these regions, says top priority should be given to watershed strategies while planning mitigation measures. Pune: Subsidies and debt waivers cannot resolve the agrarian crisis, according to a study by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE). The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims...