-The Hindu Business Line How a cluster of villages in Rajasthan embraced transparency, spurred a nationwide movement and inspired the birth of a digital portal to counter the dilution of the RTI The walls were painted a bright yellow. Drawn on them in black were statements of income and expenditure, breaking down figures in meticulous detail with rows and columns stretching across two and sometimes three floors. The paintings weren’t just on...

  A recent press release by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) shows that the declared minimum support price (MSP) for most kharif crops to be marketed in 2019-20 is at least 50 percent above the cost of production. The official information related to the newly declared MSP, which came two days ahead of the Union Budget presentation, gives the impression that the newly re-elected NDA government has kept its promise...

-Hindustan Times If Indian cities have become successful in turning away migrants, we should see that as the first sign of their demise, not their dynamism. “Stop migration into cities.” These were the words of finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman during last week’s budget speech, even as she — confusingly — called urbanization an “opportunity rather than a challenge.” A call to stop rural-urban migration should alarm, but not surprise us. The FM’s statement...

-Odisha Economy Discussion Series-2, April 2019, Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar Purpose – The recently launched KALIA scheme of the Government of Odisha is a massive direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme aimed at improving the condition of around three million farm households along with that of landless cultivators, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and vulnerable households. However, evaluations of the impacts of the scheme are likely to face difficulties in the...

-TheWire.in Why asset redistribution is superior to income redistribution. Land and labour are two basic factors needed by rural people for income generation. While women have always played a key role in agricultural production, their importance both as workers and as farm managers has been growing in the last two decades as more men move to non-farm jobs – leading to an increased feminisation of agriculture. However, ownership of land is concentrated mostly...