-The Indian Express As it completes 10 years, there is enough evidence to show that India needs the MGNREGA Nearly a year ago, the prime minister made a statement in Parliament about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). He said: “My political understanding tells me, don’t ever stop MNREGA… because MNREGA is a living monument to your [the Congress’s] failures. After 60 years of independence, you had to...
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How Do We Combat Droughts?
-Economic and Political Weekly Agriculture cannot be revived without a different approach to water, soil, crops and research. For the second year in succession, rainfall in the monsoon season has been less than normal. As many as 302 out of the 640 districts in the country have been declared drought-hit and the impact of the drought is the severest in nine major states of south, central and east India. It is striking...
More »Budget 2016: boost likely for job schemes -Arup Roychoudhury
-Business Standard Also for other programme impacting the non-urban economy, in the wake of two years of partial drought The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) seems likely to get its highest budgetary allocation since its launch a decade before. This allocation for 2016-17 could cross the previous highs of Rs 40,100 crore in the 2010-11 Budget and Rs 40,000 crore in 2011-12, by then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Actual spending...
More »5 changes that may bring agriculture back on track in 2016 -PK Joshi and Avinash Kishore
-The Financial Express Turning agriculture around should be the top priority of government in the new year. India became the world’s fastest-growing economy in 2015. Indian agriculture, however, fared much worse. Agriculture grew only by 0.2% in FY15. Two consecutive years of drought, unseasonal rains in rabi season and falling food prices in global markets have driven farmers to desperation. Turning agriculture around should be the top priority of government in the...
More »Punjab ‘emptying’ reservoirs to grow water-guzzling rice -Gurpreet Singh Nibber
-Hindustan Times Chandigarh: First, the good news. Punjab has made a record contribution of rice to the central pool. During the 2015-16 crop season, the state contributed 93.5 lakh tonnes to the public distribution system (PDS). Now, the bad news. To grow one kilogram of rice, as many as 5,337 litres of water is required ‑ more than 260 buckets of 20-litre capacity. The water consumed by rice for the central pool...
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