-The Hindu Business Line A study of Farmer Producer Organisations in Bihar show mixed results — some successes but several challenges too The government has this lofty goal of doubling farmers’ income by 2022. Among the different instruments to achieve this goal, promotion of new and scaling up of existing Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been given focus. Given the extremely small landholdings, FPOs, through collectivisation, which leads to economies of scale, are...

  There is some bad news for the world’s largest democracy. Thanks to the vitiated atmosphere induced by troll attacks on scribes on social media, among other things, the country's World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) ranking has fallen two places to 138th position.   Among 180 countries, India ranked 136th last year with a score of 42.94. However, in 2018 it attained 138th position with a score of 43.24 according to the...

-The Indian Express Raising agricultural exports requires the government to unburden policy of consumer bias. A balance should be struck between meeting the needs of food-insecure consumers and income-insecure farmers. The Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh, recently tweeted about the government’s resolve to increase the value of the country’s agricultural exports to $100 billion by 2022-23. The Dalwai Committee Report on doubling farmers’ incomes also talked of a similar target. It said,...

-The Indian Express The preliminary findings in three of these districts — Pune, Nandurbar and Raigad — show that percentage of wasting and of under-nutrition is higher than as recorded by the NFHS-4 and the Integrated Child Development System (ICDS). Mumbai: A survey by the public health department in four districts of Maharashtra has found significant under-reporting of malnutrition cases. The preliminary findings in three of these districts — Pune, Nandurbar and...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Calcutta High Court on Thursday stalled the panchayat election process and asked the state election commission to explain by Monday what it had done about the complaints of prospective Opposition candidates being prevented from filing nomination. "Till the court passes any further order on this issue, the state election commission is directed to stall the election process," Justice Subrata Talukdar said in an interim order on a BJP petition. This...