-The Hindu Business Line Rising input costs have shrunk profits, making cultivation unviable. Easy access to credit and better MSPs can help The unremitting wave of farmer suicides has resurfaced, now haunting the farming heartlands of Tamil Nadu. Troubled by a severely deficit monsoon which triggered the worst drought in 140 years, over 100 farmers, mostly in the Cauvery delta, have reportedly committed suicide during a period of one month, and the...

-The Hindu Business Line Economists warn that revenue deficit may breach target New Delhi: Will the Exchequer’s switch to a new classification of expenditure from 2017-18 help lower the revenue deficit and improve the quality of spending? The Finance Ministry believes that shift in classification to revenue and capital expenditure from April 1, departing from the current distinction of Plan and Non-Plan spending, will help it direct expenditure towards productive purposes. It is also...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s verdict that ordinances are subject to judicial review, and do not automatically create enduring effects, places a timely check on a power rampantly abused by governments On January 2, in one of many judgments delivered on its first working day of the year, the Supreme Court, in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, made a series of pronouncements with potentially huge implications for the future of...

-The Hindu The idea of a basic income is not new. The first known suggestion on an unconditional universal basic income for all adults regardless of other income sources was from Thomas More. Centuries later, in 1918, Bertrand Russell discussed a basic income sufficient for necessities as central to the social model combining the advantages of anarchism and socialism that he argued for in Proposed Roads to Freedom. “A certain small...

-The Hindu Nabard report says high dependency on well irrigation coupled with low rainfall is acting as a constraint for achieving high farm growth Hyderabad: Agriculture growth in the last five years has been negative though it has been compensated by contribution from allied agricultural activities in Telangana, said the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) in a report presented at the credit plan seminar on Friday. Expressing the bank’s perspective...