-Financial Express With the 2019 Lok Sabha elections approaching, the government plans to offer a stimulus package in the form of agricultural investment support scheme and group insurance to farmers, which could otherwise subsume the fumes of the farm loan waiver burden. Can the government consider Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu Scheme (RBS) on a scaled down version? RBS has a grant component of Rs 4,000 per acre per farmer for one season (kharif/rabi)....
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Shut for 3 months for Kumbh, UP tanneries face losses, cancelled orders -Avaneesh Mishra
-The Indian Express At least 2 lakh people are employed in these units. Most are daily-wage workers and migrants, and many have gone back home. Kanpur: The roads are empty and the local market closed in Kanpur’s Jajmau locality, with around 130 of its 249 registered tanneries ordered shut due to the Kumbh Mela and the production at others cut by half. One month into the order, and with 60 more days...
More »Policy must tackle not just dissatisfaction of large farmers, but distress of most vulnerable -Bina Agarwal
-The Indian Express To address farmers' woes, we need a multi-pronged strategy of income support, government investment, and institutional innovations, and not a one-size-fits-all approach. The two main policy interventions repeatedly discussed in recent months to tackle farmer distress — loan waivers and minimum support prices (MSP) — treat all farmers (large/small, male/female) alike. But farmers are heterogeneous. They differ especially by income, land owned and gender. And farmer dissatisfaction is...
More »One Egg per Student Proves 'Too Expensive' for Jharkhand Government -Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
-TheWire.in Citing rising prices, the BJP government has reduced the number of eggs supplied in the mid-day meal from three to two in Jharkhand. Eleven states ruled by party do not supply any. New Delhi: In keeping with its party’s overall aversion to eggs, the BJP government in Jharkhand has decided to reduce the number of eggs supplied per week to children under the mid-day meal scheme from three to two. This...
More »Addressing agrarian distress: An alternative 'area planning' price support scheme for farmers -Sher Singh Sangwan
-The Indian Express The existing MSP-based procurement system is fiscally unsustainable. The time has come to consider market intelligence-based regulation of crop production Farmers are always in distress when prices of their produce are subdued. The response of governments, obviously prompted by political pressures, has been to sharply hike minimum support prices (MSP) of crops or declare loan waivers. Thus, the current government at the Centre has significantly raised the MSPs of...
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