-Financial Express Even as loan waivers are known to help a small number of farmers, Odisha has come up with a farmer-centric scheme which assists farming on a large and secular scale. It comes at a time when a debate on validity of loan waiver is being discussed across the country. KALIA — a farmer-specific scheme launched by the state — includes payments to everyone from big farmers and landless cultivators...

-TheWire.in Why is Rs 1.84 lakh crore a "frightening challenge" for banks, but Rs 10.17 lakh crores not? The great farm loan waiver debate is back. The Congress kicked it off this time with the announcement of waivers in the newly-elected governments of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. This was followed up by similar announcements from BJP-ruled Gujarat and Assam. Rahul Gandhi even went onto to demand a nation-wide farm loan waiver from...

-CaravanMagazine.in What the Modi Economy has done to farmers On his way to the prime ministership in 2014, Narendra Modi promised that, if his Bharatiya Janata Party won power, the government would raise the minimum support prices paid for crops such as rice and wheat to guarantee farmers a 50-percent profit on their production costs. The benchmark was first proposed by the Swaminathan Commission, formed in 2004 to address farmers’ economic plight,...

-Livemint.com Given the over-optimistic revenue estimates and under-budgeted expenditure, the FinMin’s budget projections should be taken with a pinch of salt Dark clouds are gathering over the fiscal horizon. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will table an interim budget on 1 February—just weeks before India goes to polls. There’s a growing consensus among analysts that the government will miss its revenue target for the year, largely because the collections from the goods and services...

-Hindustan Times The agrarian crisis is one of the factors that may have resulted in the BJP’s loss in three Hindi heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December, according to analysts, and the party clearly doesn’t want it to affect its prospects in the 2019 parliamentary elections. New Delhi: This financial year, 2018-19 could end up being the worst year for farm incomes in almost two decades, government data...