-Livemint.com China’s example shows the benefits of the rural workforce shifting from the farm to the non-farm sector The government announced its ambitious dream of doubling farmers’ income by 2022-23 in 2015-16. Incomes would have to grow annually by 10.4% to double in seven years. The data on growth rates of farm income given by NITI Aayog in its policy paper on doubling farmers’ income shows that the real income of farmers has...

-Livemint.com The NITI Aayog and the government have decided to focus only and only on farmers and the agriculture sector, says NITI Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar New Delhi: The spectre of farm distress has finally begun to haunt policymakers and the government is doing everything it can to address the situation, Rajiv Kumar, vice-chairman of central government think tank NITI Aayog, said on Friday. “We in the NITI Aayog and the government have...

-Hindustan Times The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or coarse cereal production, mostly grown by small and poor farmers New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has decided to include millets in the public distribution system for which it is procuring these grains at federally fixed minimum support prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said. The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...

-Business Standard While ADVVDRS was hailed as a key reason for UPA's return to power in 2009, the scheme itself later drew flak for its flaws, with CAG finding many of the accounts ineligible for waiver or relief In order to help the country’s small and marginal farmers, the Congress party has promised to bring a nationwide loan waiver scheme on the lines of its 2009 programme, should the party be voted...