-Livemint.com India needs to defend policies that make agriculture remunerative and stand by its poor at this stage of development In an attempt to combat rural distress, the Union budget announced this year by finance minister Arun Jaitley promised a new deal to farmers—minimum support prices (MSP) that would be 150% of the cost of production. The government is expected to announce the first set of support prices under the new policy in...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Non-agricultural jobs pay better than the agrarian ones, on average, though wage rates vary across different rural occupations
If someone is a rural male, what occupation would he prefer? A rational person might say that depending on the highest prevailing daily wage rate in a particular occupation (which is subject to seasonal variation) vis-à-vis the rest, he will make his choice. An exercise undertaken by the Inclusive Media for Change team based on the latest available month-wise wage data of rural men shows that there is a seasonal variation...
More »Close to a quarter of households in 13 states have faced corruption in 2018, shows a recent study
The present NDA government led by the BJP at the Centre came to power in 2014 on the planks of development and anti-corruption. However, contrary to PM Narendra Modi's slogan of 'Na Khaunga, Na Khaane Doonga' (meaning ‘would not take bribes, nor would let anyone accept bribe’), a new report by the Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies (CMS) shows that almost three-fourth of Indian households think that the level of...
More »Balancing conflicting claims -C Rangarajan & DK Srivastava
-The Hindu The 15th Finance Commission has to take a call on the degree of equalisation that’s feasible In the context of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the 15th Finance Commission (FFC), certain key aspects relate to (a) the mandate for using the 2011 population; (b) ‘whether revenue deficit grants’ be given at all; (c) the impact of the goods and services tax (GST) on the finances of the Centre and...
More »An open letter to Finance Ministers -TM Thomas Isaac
-The Hindu Political alignments should not come in the way of defending the fiscal rights of States My fellow Finance Ministers in the States, I hope you will agree that the award of the Finance Commission is vital to State finances. Some of us who met initially at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and later at Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, are worried about the implications of the terms of reference (ToR) of the Finance Commission...
More »