-Livemint.com Krishi Kalyan Cess, a 0.5% cess on all taxable services introduced last year to support a drought-hit farm sector, will raise Rs 9,000 crore in 2016-17 New Delhi: Krishi Kalyan Cess, a 0.5% cess on all taxable services introduced last year to support a drought-hit farm sector, will raise Rs 9,000 crore in 2016-17, budget documents presented in the parliament on Wednesday showed. The central government is spending money from this corpus...

-The Indian Express Considering all these aspects, farmers had higher expectation that Budget 2017-18 would give them the best deal. However, this expectation was not met. It is now widely recognised and reported that farmers in India are facing a distressing situation. During 1995-96 to 2015-16, about 3 lakh farmers in the country committed suicide due to economic distress and depression. The Election Manifesto of Bharatiya Janata Party in both 1998 and...

-The Pioneer Centre must come up with a national policy The Supreme Court’s intervention for the lack of a national policy to help calamity-hit farmers is welcome. Regardless of what we have at the moment for them, the country's bread-earners must be offered all possible support to strengthen the economy. While taking up a number of public interest litigations, the apex court found that the Government had no policy to tackle the...

-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...

-The Hindu Business Line Non-loanee farmers availing insurance may be far fewer than data claim Last January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced a new Crop Insurance scheme with the aim of bringing 50 per cent of the country’s farmers under insurance cover in three years. Data shows that in kharif 2016 — the first season after the scheme’s launch — Crop Insurance coverage had risen. However, despite the Centre’s claims, this growth is...