-Frontline.in Recently released data from the CSO, which claimed that demonetisation had had no significant impact on the performance of the economy, raise more questions than provide answers. Official data released by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) on the last day of February, which claimed that the national gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 7 per cent in the October-December period, the third quarter of 2016-17, came as a morale booster...

-The Economic Times blog In every Union Budget presentation, agriculture is given a place of prominence. This is not surprising, given that 50% of India’s population is dependent on agriculture. Budget 2017 was no different. Both the Economic Survey and the Budget speech stressed heavily on improving agricultural infrastructure and augmenting farmer incomes. The key drivers expected to set this off are areas such as investment in irrigation infrastructure, development of mandis...

-The Indian Express Farmer producer organisations have truly taken off. Now’s the time to create their own lobbying platform. In the summer of 2011, as the managing director of the Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), an autonomous society under the Union Agriculture Ministry, I addressed a group of Uttar Pradesh government officials in Lucknow. My hosts politely sat through my presentation and near-evangelical pitch, as I pushed the idea of promoting farmer...

-Economic and Political Weekly Shantanu De Roy (shantanudr2004@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Policy Studies, TERI University, New Delhi. It was argued that economic liberalisation would ensure a favourable shift in the terms of trade for agriculture in India, enabling producers to plough back surplus from cultivation to make long-term improvements on land, and raise agricultural productivity and growth rate. Contrary to expectations, there was no noticeable improvement in the terms of...

-TheWire.in Farmer suicides and hunger deaths plague flagship village of SP government. “Have you heard of kangaali mein aata geela? That is our situation,”says Sugha Singh as he sits outside Balwan Singh’s house along with other village men under the tree on a warm February afternoon. He is referring to an old Hindi idiom which means getting into more hardships one after another. They are mourning the death of Munni Devi, 78,...