-TheWire.in Reports on education ignore the fact that students in public and private schools are vastly different. Reform is necessary, but there are no silver bullets. The ASER report paints a grim picture of what is (not) happening in Bihar’s schools. Only around 24% percent of children in Class III can read a Class II text. A little more than half the enrolled children are present on any given day. More than...
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P Sainath, acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People's Archive of Rural India, interviewed by Anuradha SenGupta (News18.com)
-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...
More »MSP was not 1.5 times the cost of production for most kharif crops during the last 6 agricultural years
In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...
More »Deflation in WPI of 8 kharif crops observed during 2016-17 to 2018-19, while their MSPs grew at a positive rate
It is being said by economists that unlike the issue of low food production that gripped Indian agriculture for long in the past, the present problem is about farmers not getting remunerative prices against the crops that they are growing. According to farmer leaders, the policymakers are too late to realise that bitter truth. As a result, there is a growing disenchantment in the rural hinterland against the ruling government...
More »Kerala's alternative to farm loan waivers has lessons for India -Nidheesh MK
-Livemint.com Thanks to the debt relief commission, 11,354 Kerala farmers have benefited from a disbursement of over ?11 crore, and there are no farmer suicides in the state Ernakulam/ Bengaluru: Back in 2006, Kerala came face to face with an explosive situation. Ironically in a state dominated by Communist politicians, farming was dominated by export-oriented cash crops such as rubber and pepper, prices of which had plunged in the global market. It...
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