Budgetary allocation to a particular sector indicates how much priority the government assigns to that sector as compared to the rest. A preliminary analysis by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicates that the actual expenditure (net of receipts and recoveries) by two of the country’s most important ministries, namely the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) was less than 1 percent...

-The Financial Express Over 14 crore households who cultivate on land owned by others under a formal lease agreement or even under a temporary arrangement overseen by the gram panchayats or other official functionaries may soon start getting assorted sops doled out to “farmers” by the government just as their land-owing counterparts do. According to official sources, the definition of farmer will be changed via a gazzette notification to include cultivators...

-The Hindu Business Line Online registration of farmers, higher moisture in the produce delay the procurement Mumbai: The targeted procurement of 4.46 lakh tonnes of tur (redgram or pigeon pea) in Maharashtra is expected to commence on a full scale by February 1. The Nafed procurement process is delayed as farmers have been asked to first register online for selling their produce. Sources in the Nafed said that about one lakh farmers have...

-The Telegraph Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh): Many a fear has been expressed over the potential misuse of the Aadhaar card, ranging from privacy violation to online looting to suppression of dissent. Now, a headmaster in Uttar Pradesh has been accused of opening an unforeseen flank by showing the door to 17 pupils on the pretext that they hadn't submitted their Aadhaar numbers. Rajesh Kumar, the headmaster of the government-run Laltapur Primary School in Chandauli...

-The Hindu Business Line Lingering distress in the sector may force the govt to think innovatively New Delhi: Agriculture sector, which suffered badly despite higher production in the last two years, may be a key focus area for the NDA government, when it presents its last full-fledged Union Budget before the 2019 general elections. Attending a function recently in the Capital, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley unequivocally said that that the farm sector...