-The Hindu Business Line Farmers have been borrowing from banks to repay lenders and reversing the cycle Ahmedabad: In the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, a saying goes: “A farmer is always indebted. He is born in debt and dies with a debt. What matters is how he manages this debt in his life.” There is a skew in Gujarat’s water resource distribution. Saurashtra covers 31 per cent of the State’s landmass but gets...
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Money is getting diverted away from small farmers: TISS Agro Economist -NS Vageesh
-The Hindu Business Line Mumbai: The flow of Agricultural credit may have increased from ?96,000 crore in 2004 to ?10 lakh crore now; about 18,000 new rural branches have been set up and yet there is an agrarian crisis because of definitional dilusions as well as diversion of funds from the needy small farmers, Professor Ramakumaar, Agro Economist, Tata Insitute of Social Sciences (TISS), said on Monday. He was speaking at...
More »Loan waiver is not the solution -Anjani Kumar and Seema Bathla
-The Hindu We need to revisit the credit policy with a focus on the outreach of banks and financial inclusion Since Independence, one of the primary objectives of India’s agricultural policy has been to improve farmers’ access to institutional credit and reduce their dependence on informal credit. As informal sources of credit are mostly usurious, the government has improved the flow of adequate credit through the nationalisation of commercial banks, and the...
More »Gujarat farmers unlikely to benefit from sops doled out by State govt -Rajalakshmi Nirmal
-The Hindu Business Line Costs, prices, credit issues are a challenge, just as in other States Ahead of the Assembly elections, the Gujarat government has announced a slew of measures to woo rural voters. This includes waiver of GST on equipment used in micro-irrigation, 0 interest on loans up to ?3 lakh for farmers, and a bonus of ?500 per quintal on cotton. But these sops are not likely to make farmers in...
More »Six steps to job creation -Santosh Mehrotra
-The Hindu It is crucial to align policy across sectors and upgrade the country’s social infrastructure In India’s highly segmented labour market, one can still discern at least three demographic groups that are in urgent need of jobs: a growing number of better educated youth; uneducated agricultural workers who wish to leave agricultural distress behind; and young women, who too are better educated than ever before. India is indeed the fastest growing large economy...
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