-The Hindu Business Line The Budget’s agriculture focus is welcome, but it could have done better A Budget with a purported focus on agriculture could not have come at a better time. There has been a sharp dip in agriculture output from a trend rate of growth of 4 per cent per annum in the period 2004-05 to 2011-12 to about 1.5 per cent in the next four years, which includes a...

-AP/Bloomberg Whether Modi can raise farmer incomes without stoking inflation may determine if his economic vision is any different from the previous Congress-led govt New Delhi: Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014, his first economic plan promised modern cities, manufacturing corridors and bullet trains to aspirational Indians yearning to join a ‘neo middle class.’ This week his latest Budget struck a much different tone, listing a slew...

-Business Standard Cess, surcharges come in handy New Delhi: Looking to leave its political imprint over spending in rural India, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has Budgeted for a massive 31 per cent hike in its share of spending on nine big-ticket centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) in 2016-17 over last year's Budgetary allocation. Last year's Budget mantra of 'cooperative federalism' has been sidestepped to favour political exigencies. To fund these schemes, which...

-The Indian Express Central allocations for agriculture are less important than the state Budgets. I took the night train to Delhi to participate in Budget-day discussions and my co-passenger, who boarded the train in ravaged Punjab, asked me a simple question: “50 farmers are committing suicide everyday; will the Budget end farmer suicides?” My answer was — and still is — “No.” The Union Budget is just the government’s bookkeeping exercise...

-Livemint.com A growth-first approach may work in the short-term, but India needs to prioritize sustainability simultaneously The Union Budget 2016-17, seeking to “transform India”, has been hailed for its emphasis on agricultural growth and sustainability. Symbolically, the finance minister put “agriculture and farmers’ welfare” first in his nine-point agenda. The words “agriculture” and “farmer” found 20 and 32 mentions, respectively, in the Budget speech, the highest in the last decade. On the...