-The Indian Express Agrarian crisis is an opportunity, for the government that assumes office after elections, to enact a law giving farmers the right to sell any quantity of their produce to anybody, anywhere and at any time. The German obsession with sound currency has been conditioned by the collective memory of the Great Hyperinflation of 1922-23, just as American intolerance to double-digit unemployment and stock market crashes is traceable to...

-The Indian Express PET bottles imported for processing in SEZs had increased substantially. New Delhi: The government has plugged a loophole that allowed the import of plastic waste into India for processing. “…Solid plastic waste has been prohibited from import into the country including in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and by Export Oriented Units (EOU),” the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) said in an order made public on Wednesday. The...

-The Hindu The top-down, rushed approach of the government in reaching out to farmers is likely to end in failure This year’s Interim Budget is being regarded as a big spread for farmers. The government announced its decision to transfer Rs.6,000 every year directly to 12 crore farmers holding cultivable land up to 2 hectares through the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme. While this is a progressive step, is it...

-The Hindu The Interim Budget makes clear the class hierarchy in the Modi government’s scheme of populism Interim Budget 2019 has sought to make amends for all the wrongs of almost five years of the Narendra Modi government. For example, the debilitating impact of demonetisation on the informal sector that employs nearly 90% of the workforce had long been suspected on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The findings of the National Sample...

-The Hindu Steps like limited procurement, boosting productivity and consolidating land holdings can help reduce agrarian distress Recently, there has been active discussion on the strategies addressing farm distress. There are media reports that the ‘interim Budget’ may focus on the farm sector among other things. Agrarian distress, in the present context, is mainly in terms of low agricultural prices and, consequently, poor farm incomes. Low productivity in agriculture and related supply...