-The Indian Express The farmers are under severe stress, with profitability in farming falling alarmingly. FY17 budget must boldly address the agriculture crisis. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his team are beginning pre-budget consultations with various stakeholders for the upcoming FY17 budget. Generally, the consultations start with agriculture, slated for January 4. It’s good practice and courteous to invite farm experts and farmers’ representatives. Often, one finds these meetings full of anguish...

-Outlook Haryana’s new, ‘progressive’ panchayat election rules skewers the chances of women and the marginalised In rural Haryana, last year’s drought-hit fields are finally giving way to the verdant yellow and green of mustard, but the people are restive, even angry. All along the glittering 250-km highway that connects Rohtak with Nuh—Haryana’s west and east, also its best and worst—a wedge has been driven between the rich and the poor by...

-The Hindu Business Line And worse still, to favour urea producers over decontrolled fertiliser units in gas allocation, exacerbating the nutrient imbalance The manner in which gas is allocated within the fertiliser sector smacks of arbitrariness. The Centre gives a uniform subsidy to all manufacturers, including those of decontrolled complex fertilisers, under the Nutrient Based Scheme (NBS) . Why, then, does it use a different yardstick for allocation of gas to manufacturers of...

Often considered to be a rain-abundant region, the North East has been receiving lesser rainfall during the South West monsoon in the recent years as compared to the 1980s and 1990s. This has been revealed in a study entitled Unprecedented drought in North East India compared to Western India done by Bikash Ranjan Parida and Bakimchandra Oinam (see the link below). Appearing in the December issue of prestigious peer-reviewed scientific...

-The Tribune To ensure stable prices of pulses and attractive returns for producers, policies of domestic prices and tariffs should blend. Import duties must be calibrated with demand. As the Indian economy grows at a rate of 7 per cent plus, assuming low growth as an aberration, the food basket will diversify. Within grains, the movement will be to pulses as shown by the  expert group on pulse production. The yield and...