-Frontline.in Despite its deeply flawed neoliberal perspective, Economic Survey 2017-18 is rich in detail, has many useful analytical discussions at different levels of aggregation, and would serve as a useful resource for students and scholars. When Arvind Subramanian, the present Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance who took office way back in October 2014, presented his first Economic Survey, the one for 2014-15, there was considerable novelty on offer, at...

-Livemint.com The finance minister’s clarification that the government will use the A2+FL measure to determine MSPs for crops is likely to disappoint farmer organizations Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday that farmers would be provided 50% returns over and above what they spend on inputs such as seeds and fertilizers and an imputed value of family labour, clearing the confusion over which measure of cost of cultivation would be used to...

-The Indian Express There are grand promises. But the actual increases in budgetary outlays are shockingly low. This government is especially good at optics, at managing public perceptions to persuade people that it is working for them, rather than doing so. So it is no surprise that Arun Jaitley’s pre-election budget speech went on about how much his government cares for the people, the poor, for farmers, for women, for people...

-Livemint.com While trade policy is skewed against farmers, rural schemes lag behind targets, say the organizations New Delhi: The Union government has overlooked the spectre of rural distress and gone back on its promises to ensure remunerative returns to farmers, several farmer organizations claimed on Tuesday while releasing a paper on the state of Indian agriculture, ahead of the Union budget. Titled Green Paper on Farmers, Farming and Rural Economy 2018, the document...

-TheWire.in In a green paper, organisations have pointed out how a number of promises made to farmers have not been kept. New Delhi: Terming the Narendra Modi government as the “most anti-farmer government in the history of independent India” for reneging on its “core” promise of revising minimum support prices (MSP), a ‘green paper’ on agriculture says the Bharatiya Janata Party’s pledge to “double farm incomes by 2022” remains a distant dream. “The...