-The Hindu Slowdown in the economy was led by sluggish growth in the Agriculture, forestry and fishing sector (2.9% growth), the mining sector (1.3% growth) and manufacturing (6.9%). India’s GDP grew at 5.8% in the January-March 2019 quarter, dragging down the full year growth to a five-year low of 6.8%. The unemployment rate in the country rose to a 45-year high of 6.1% in 2017-18, as per official data released on the...

-The Hindu Business Line 14.5 crore farmers will get Rs.6,000 annually in three equal instalments The Union Cabinet, which held its first meeting on Friday, decided to extend the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan) to all farmers in the country irrespective of their landholdings. The Rs.75,000-crore PM Kisan scheme, first announced in the Interim Budget on February 1, was meant only for small and marginal farmers. According to the scheme, poor...

-Mumbai Mirror Modi, with his brilliant communication skills along with the media at his disposal, managed to convince farmers to give him a longer rope A senior farm leader had once told me in a regretful tone: “Whenever farmers are denied their rightful crop insurance, or they are harassed by banks for loan recovery, they come to us. We agitate, protest and resist the system’s bullying of farmers. But the same farmers...

-Firstpost.com The sensitivity of agricultural productivity to climate depends strongly on crop selection. India is a vast country with disparate climate variability and change signals from north-to-south and east-to-west. The mix of field crops like rice, wheat, jowar, corn and soybean, as well as speciality products like vegetables, flowers, nuts, fruits, etc, are also vastly different across the subcontinent. To understand the climate sensitivity of Agriculture across such complex terrain that has...

-The Indian Express In his second term, Prime Minister Modi can ensure better urbanisation through greater devolution of power, and finances, to urban local bodies. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins his second term with an even larger political mandate, it is time to reflect on what should be the priorities in fixing our cities. The scale of the challenge is massive whether we look at the availability of clean drinking...