-Livemint.com It is not possible to provide ‘maximum governance’ with ‘minimum government’. We need ‘good government’ for ‘good governance’, says Deepak Nayyar The erstwhile Planning Commission closed down soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision on 15 August 2014. Its demise was attributable partly to the ideological belief that planning is passé in this age of markets and globalization and partly to its poor performance combined with growing irrelevance. The...

-The Hindu ‘It didn’t go well with India’s IPR policy’ New Delhi: The former Deputy Chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia criticised an Agriculture Ministry order earlier this year to cap the royalty and sale price of cotton seed. The Ministry, in March, used its powers under the Essential Commodities Act — a legislation that allows the government to determine the price of commodities including seed — to declare that...

-The Hindu ‘Groundwater will not be a free resource’   New Delhi: The government has for the first time said that citizens had a right to safe water and laid out stringent rules on how corporations and large entities can extract groundwater in two separate pieces of draft legislation uploaded on the website of the Union Water Ministry and open for public comment. The Bills —in a first — also propose fines ranging from...

-The Hindu Business Line Citing Swaminathan panel formula, farmers ‘reject’ MSP Hyderabad: Farmers associations and agri-economists are angry over the “meagre” hike in the minimum support price (MSP) for paddy, pulses and other crops.     The government on Wednesday announced a hike in the MSP of Rs. 60 a quintal for paddy and Rs. 425 for pulses, far below the farmers’ expectations. Swaminathan panel formula The hike in the MSP falls well short of the...

-Livemint.com Nominal hikes in crop support prices means that farmers are bearing the burden of government policy to keep food inflation in check New Delhi: The Narendra Modi led government has set a target to double farm incomes by 2022, but in the past three years it announced only nominal hikes for support prices of rice and wheat. What’s more: the raises were lower than the prevailing retail inflation, meaning declining...