The central government claims that allowing foreign direct investment into India’s retail sector will benefit small farmers, expand employment and lower food inflation. What has been the experience in India with organised retail so far and what has been the global experience with FDI? Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iegindia.org) is currently at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. After being under relentless attack for a week, the United Progressiv Alliance government was forced to...
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Maharashtra plans to use MGNREGS labour for agriculture: Ajit Pawar
-The Hindu Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar revealed on Sunday that the State was in talks about utilising the labour under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for agriculture, to bridge the shortage of supply of farm labour. “The State government is discussing whether it will be possible to divert the labour available under the MGNREGS to agriculture in the State, which is losing...
More »How to use the existing RTI Act of India to query the private sector by Veeresh Malik
Chances of a single answer to two opposing questions on the RTI Act means there is something to it which the rule-books don’t tell you about—but you can bowl googlies to them, too, when the system expects you to hold a straight bat to their bouncers Here is a single answer to two diametrically opposite questions—“Yes, you can file an application under the Right to Information Act of India 2005 (RTI...
More »Death as a way out by Jayati Ghosh
It is clearly the absence of political will rather than a paucity of ideas that is responsible for the country's agrarian crisis. EXACTLY seven years ago this month, the Commission on Farmers' Welfare, appointed by the government of Andhra Pradesh, submitted its report to the then Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. His Congress government assumed office earlier that year replacing the Telegu Desam Party regime led by N. Chandrababu Naidu, which...
More »Why are farmers of Hoshangabad committing suicide?
-ANI The statistics for farmer suicides in India are as striking as they are shameful. One farmer suicide every 30 minutes in 2009, screamed a NYU School of Law report earlier this year. If one accepts that many suicides also go unreported, even this shocking statistics is perhaps an under-estimation. Why, then, would another three suicides, this time in Madhya Pradesh's Hoshangabad District, be newsworthy? For one, the suicides took place during the...
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