-The Hindu Business Line Nominal income already doubles every 6 years; real income will take 16 years Nearly a year ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled his dream of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022. But how viable is this promise? For one, there is ambiguity on the number the Centre is targeting. Data on farm income is not released at regular intervals. A survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation comes once in...

-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Blaming weaknesses in the regulatory system as being the reason behind the rising cases of financial sector fraud, comptroller and auditor general (CAG) Shashi Kant Sharma on Friday drew attention to huge non-performing assets (NPAs) of public sector banks, a significant part of which could have been fraudulently obtained as advances by debtors and transferred abroad, from where they may never be recovered. The CAG also...

-PTI New Delhi: As pulses continued to soar to touch up to Rs 200 per kg, intelligence agencies were on Thursday asked to crack down on cartels, while futures trade was curbed to check speculation and buffer stock was hiked over 5-times to 8 lakh tonnes to boost supply in a multi-pronged approach. Efforts were also beefed up to sell larger quantities of pulses at highly-subsidised rates through government agencies and outlets,...