-Livemint.com Unless economic misery is alleviated soon, the Narendra Modi-led BJP may have to face angry voters in 2019 general elections New Delhi: A year back, there seemed to be no stopping Narendra Modi. After a landslide victory in the Uttar Pradesh elections, the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seemed to have acquired an aura of invincibility. But that aura has diminished somewhat over the past few months as anti-incumbency has grown....

-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-Macroscan.org Indian banking today is at a tipping point. Banks are burdened with non-performing assets, incurring significant losses due to provisioning and unable to sustain Credit Growth, and therefore changes are both necessary and inevitable. There are possible strategies with very different implications: many leading banks could be restructured with state support and encouraged to regain the status they had as major instruments of development policy in the two decades after...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI | MUMBAI: The government's spending in the budget aimed at bolstering rural development and providing higher income for farmers has not increased significantly and it may take at least two quarters to drive growth in the hinterland, consumer goods companies said. More than a third of daily-use branded products are sold in the rural areas, home to about 800 million people, whose purchasing behaviour depends on farm...

-The Hindu Policy should address credit, crop insurance, drip irrigation The government’s efforts to focus on the welfare of farmers in the Union Budget is admirable. However, in a zero-sum situation such as budget allocation, the government often finds itself trying to choose between short-term results and long-term benefits. Short term results might come with loan waivers and increase of Minimum Support Price (MSP), but care should be taken to address the...