-The Indian Express For the last 10 years, farmers in India benefited from both increased production and higher price realisations - leading to rising rural incomes and declining poverty rates. That happy story may now be near its end - which could be the precursor to a renewed crisis in agriculture. The main reason is declining global prices for most agri-commodities (see Table 1). Over the last five-six months, corn, wheat and...
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A muddled food debate -Milind Murugkar
-Livemint The central point in the food policy debate is if we want farmers to choose their crops on the signal of the markets of the signal of the MSPs The word ‘expert' has a magical connotation. Once an expert has spoken, even assertions are perceived to be the truth. But sometimes experts make unfounded assertions. No matter how reputable the expert, it pays to examine the assertions. The government has appointed...
More »NREGA spiked rural wages only 10%, rest is from MSPs: Rajan
-PTI Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has dismissed the notion that the rural employment guarantee programme is behind the massive spurt in wages in rural areas. "On the NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), there is clearly a lot of sense that this has increased rural wages tremendously. I would argue that clean, trustworthy studies say that the effect was may be 10 per cent," Rajan told an audience here last week. It...
More »Stick to reform
-The Business Standard Do not roll back crucial food procurement reform Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, in an interview to this newspaper, has said that his ministry has not come to any "firm conclusion" on his directive to states about procurement. The Centre had told states to stop offering a bonus on top of the Centre's minimum support prices (MSPs) for wheat and rice, and to limit their procurement to match the...
More »Farmers suicides will continue as problems are deep-rooted -KV Kurmanath
-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: The news of 11,772 farmers committing suicide did not hit the headlines when the NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) released its data for 2013 early this week. The gravity of the problem somehow didn't get the attention it deserved. Perhaps, we are quite used to the numbers since they have always remained north of 10,000 in the last few years. Those who closely follow developments in Indian...
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