-The Hindu Repayment of all cooperative crop loans to be staggered The State government on Tuesday announced in the Legislative Assembly that there would be waiver of land revenue collection in all the 123 drought-hit taluks encompassing 24 districts of the State, with immediate effect. Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda, replying to a discussion (initially sought to be taken up as an adjournment motion) on the drought which was brought on by deficient...

  For women, the NREGA would bring important social gains   Not being an expert on the subject and too lazy to read all the fine print, I do not know the exact allocations under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act this year. But I gather the money has been cut down, largely because the sums allocated last year were not fully used by most states. Maybe there were other considerations...

-PTI   Setting a precedent before his cabinet colleagues, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has officially declared his assets and liabilities worth over Rs 4.83 crore.  Akhilesh, 38, who uploaded details of his assets and liabilities on the official website of the state government, is the first Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to make a public declaration.  In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when Akhilesh filed his nomination papers for Kannauj parliamentary seat, he...

The state government has proposed to spend more than Rs7,300 crore on the ailing agriculture sector — in desperate need of assistance after registering negative growth in the previous financial year — and on irrigation. However, this may not translate into direct assistance to farmers. Moreover, this year’s state budget continued to neglect dry land farming – which is of serious concern in view of erratic weather conditions – and has...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...