-The Hindu Business Line And worse still, to favour urea producers over decontrolled fertiliser units in gas allocation, exacerbating the nutrient imbalance The manner in which gas is allocated within the fertiliser sector smacks of arbitrariness. The Centre gives a uniform subsidy to all manufacturers, including those of decontrolled complex fertilisers, under the Nutrient Based Scheme (NBS) . Why, then, does it use a different yardstick for allocation of gas to manufacturers of...

-The Indian Express   India’s poor are closely bunched up near the poverty line. This could make poverty alleviation more manageable.    A recent World Bank (WB) report brought out poverty ratios across countries. According to these estimates, poverty in India in 2011-12 could be as low as 12.4 per cent if we use “modified mixed reference period” (MMRP), in which there are three recall periods depending on the nature of items. This...

Often considered to be a rain-abundant region, the North East has been receiving lesser rainfall during the South West monsoon in the recent years as compared to the 1980s and 1990s. This has been revealed in a study entitled Unprecedented drought in North East India compared to Western India done by Bikash Ranjan Parida and Bakimchandra Oinam (see the link below). Appearing in the December issue of prestigious peer-reviewed scientific...

-Economic and Political Weekly Why has pulse production stagnated despite measures to boost production being well known? This season, the prices of pulses (dals) have been on fire. According to the Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, the average retail price of red gram (tuar) doubled from around Rs 80 a kg in March 2015 to Rs 150–Rs 160 a kg in November 2015. What could...

-Hindustan Times India witnessed an impressive surge in the number of women owning or managing agricultural land in 2001-11 with landholdings under them registering a faster growth in this period than the ones controlled by men, shows a World Bank-backed study that points to improved gender equity in land rights. Though the amount of farmland controlled by women in the country is still marginal at 10% of the total, the number of...