-Hindustan Times The 15th Finance Commission (FC) has to submit its report in October 2019, which will be another important event in the evolution of India’s fiscal federalism framework. The tenure of the Narendra Modi government has seen important changes in India’s fiscal federalism set-up such as the abolition of the Planning Commission (PC) and the roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The 15th Finance Commission (FC) has to submit...

-Down to Earth Farmers living in tribal areas in Jharkhand alleged that industrialists and the government are conspiring to ruin diverse traditional seeds and crops Farmers from Jharkhand’s Singhbhum district, a tribal area, alleged that the government and industrialists are trying to destroy their traditional Knowledge of agriculture and looting cultivable land. This happened on the last day of a conference held on ‘Traditional agriculture: challenges and possibilities’ at Chaibasa this month. These...

-The Hindu Business Line Kochi (Kerala): The two-day conference on ‘Models for Agricultural Development: Experiences of Farmer Producer Companies’, has called for sustained efforts to strengthen, streamline, support and coordinate Farmer Producer Organisations. The conference, jointly organised by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Kerala Agriculture University and Indian Society of Agricultural Economics (ISAE), mooted a national level consortium to help the FPCs realise their goals and lead the efforts to enhance farmers’...

-The Hindu Poor people are running from pillar to post as the Aadhaar payment bridge routinely obstructs their welfare benefits Perhaps you will remember “l’affaire Airtel” — the mass diversion of LPG subsidies to Airtel wallets that came to light in 2017. Many of the wallets were unwanted, or even unknown to the recipients. Those affected, fortunately, included millions of middle-class Airtel customers who protested when the goof-up emerged. The subsidy money...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org Calculating water availability and crop budgeting can prevent over-extraction of groundwater and mounting farm debt. At 42 years, Bhagwat Ghagare seems young. But he is old enough to have seen his village prosper and decline many times. Farming had traditionally been small and distress migration rampant at Kumbharwadi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Between 1998 and 2002, a non-profit organisation, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), initiated a work related to rainwater harvesting...