-Down to Earth The country’s organic / natural farming coverage remains poor despite abundant indegenous resources Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to farmers December 16 to ensure that at least one village in every gram panchayat goes for natural farming methods. He highlighted the importance of ‘gaudhan’, or use of cow dung-urine formulations, with an aim of giving a fillip to natural farming. “The maximum benefit of natural farming will be for 80...
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MNREGA funds allocation: Honouring the work-on-demand guarantee -Ashwini Kulkarni
-IdeasforIndia.com The Centre has sought an additional Rs. 25,000 crore as funding for MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Based on simple calculations using official data, Ashwini Kulkarni contends that the actual fund requirement is in fact much higher. As the pandemic continues to adversely impact rural livelihoods, the government should allocate sufficient funds to MNREGA, in order to honour the work-on-demand guarantee. For over a month, national and local...
More »Explained: Zero Budget Natural Farming & Efforts to Scale it Up -Nidhi Jacob
-FactChecker.in While Zero Budget Natural Farming promotes chemical-free agricultural practices, data regarding the method's effectiveness still insufficient Zero Budget Natural Farming has been on the government's agenda, which got another push from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 14, 2021. While addressing an event marking the 98th anniversary celebration of Sadguru Sadafaldeo Vihangam Yog Sansthan in Varanasi, Modi said Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) should become a mass movement and people should...
More »Health account numbers that require closer scrutiny -Indranil
-The Hindu The reduction of out-of-pocket expenditure that the NHA highlights is essentially due to a decline in utilisation of care Low public spending on health in India has meant that people depend heavily on their own means to access health care. It causes rich-poor, rural-urban, gender and caste-based divides in access to health care, pushes people to poverty, and forces them to incur debt or sell assets. As a result, our...
More »Gramin Agricultural Markets: Two years on, just 6% haats upgraded -Shagun Kapil
-Down to Earth The Centre had announced a scheme in the 2018-19 Budget to upgrade rural haats so that small farmers could get fair prices for their produce It has been two years since an ambitious programme to convert 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) was launched. But only 1,251 have come up till now. This is barely six per cent of the target. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told...
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