-Press release by Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) dated 1st February, 2020 New Delhi, February 1st 2020: A thorough analysis of the Budget shows that even though the Budget speech spoke much about Agriculture and Rural sector and a 16-point program, the allocations for the Rural Economy were in fact slashed in this Budget compared to previous year. The Budget allocation for Agriculture, Allied sectors and Irrigation in 2020-21...
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MGNREGA allocation is way off the mark to uplift the rural economy & address economic downturn, say Right to Work activists
The Union Budget 2020-21, which was presented by the Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman on 1st February, 2020 has failed to impress civil society activists and farmers' rights groups (click here and here). Through their press releases and notes, members of CSOs were demanding as well as suggesting the Union Government for hiking the budgetary allocation for schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Pradhan Mantri...
More »Aruna Roy bereaved of her sister -Mohammed Iqbal
-The Hindu ‘Barefoot College’s archives bear testimony to Ms. Lindsay’s methodical and painstaking work’ Manya Jayaram Lindsay, younger sister of social activist Aruna Roy, died in Hitchin, U.K., after suffering from cancer in recent years. She had set up the preventive and curative health structure at the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC), Tilonia — widely known as the Barefoot College — and studied indigenous people in the U.S. and Australia, and...
More »Deposit insurance cover raised to Rs.5 lakh
-The Hindu The first increase in 27 years assumes significance in the wake of the crisis at PMC Bank Mumbai: The government has decided to increase the insurance cover for bank deposits to ?5 lakh from ?1 lakh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. This is the first time since 1993 that the deposit insurance cover has been raised. The Finance Minister assured that there was a robust mechanism in...
More »Examining the FM's plan to double farmers' income in two years -Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express The FM’s other ideas for agriculture, especially on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), which she repeated this year, need to be tested before it becomes a national policy. In her Budget speech, Nirmala Sitharaman spelled out sixteen measures to reboot agriculture and re-affirmed the Modi government’s resolve to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. Agriculture is categorized by her as “Aspirational India”. All these sixteen measures are broadly in the...
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