-The Hindu ‘Time to build consensus on not making such poll promises’ Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel on Thursday stressed the need for building a national consensus on loan waiver schemes. Addressing a press conference here, he said this was needed so that promises such as loan waivers are not made during elections. “We need to create consensus so that such loan waiver promises are eschewed. Otherwise, sub-sovereign fiscal challenges in...

-Livemint.com Narendra Modi’s election promise in Uttar Pradesh comes back to haunt as other states demand the Union govt offer an agriculture bailout package across the country New Delhi: An election promise to farmers in the politically sensitive state of Uttar Pradesh is coming back to haunt Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as other states demand the Union government offer an agriculture bailout package across the country. During the hard-fought election campaign, Modi pledged...

-PRS Legislative Research The key findings of the report entitled: State of Agriculture in India by Tanvi Deshpande (March, 2017) are as follows: * The agriculture sector employs nearly half of the workforce in the country.  However, it contributes to 17.5% of the GDP (at current prices in 2015-16). * Over the past few decades, the manufacturing and services sectors have increasingly contributed to the growth of the economy, while the agriculture sector’s...

-Livemint.com In the case of repeated farm loan waivers, it makes sense for borrowers to default strategically Hope: The Narendra Modi government says it wants to double farm income by 2022 through the transformation of Indian agriculture. Reality: The political discourse continues to focus perversely on farm loan waivers. Here are some recent instances. The new Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh is considering a farm loan waiver as promised in its election...

-Frontline.in Recently released data from the CSO, which claimed that demonetisation had had no significant impact on the performance of the economy, raise more questions than provide answers. Official data released by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) on the last day of February, which claimed that the national gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 7 per cent in the October-December period, the third quarter of 2016-17, came as a morale booster...