-The Business Standard In a move that could lessen the Centre's foodgrain procurement burden, it has allowed the Punjab government to purchase and distribute grains in advance to beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) for the next few months. As a result, 800,000-900,000 tonnes, mostly wheat, will not come to the Centre's pool for a while. Punjab is one of the main wheat and rice producers in the country. It had...

In the midst of irregular monsoons affecting agriculture, a new report shows stagnation in the state of irrigation infrastructure. The recent report entitled Infrastructure Statistics 2014 (Third Issue) by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has provided information that despite the rise in expenditure on irrigation infrastructure, there has been no substantial improvement in the gross irrigation potential utilized*. Athough expenditure on irrigation has increased from Rs. 36561.64 crores...

-The Business Standard Forest Rights Act being reinterpreted to avoid amendment Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is discussing possible ways to do away with the mandatory requirement of securing consent from tribal gram sabhas (village councils) before cutting down their forests for industrial purposes. The deliberations, on among various ministries, are for zeroing in on such a way that the requirement is removed without...

-The Hindu Business Line India's vehicles should incorporate safety features that are the norm elsewhere The tremendous increase in the number of vehicles on Indian roads has also led to an increase in road accidents. India accounts for 10 per cent of the global road crash fatalities. Statistics shows that globally more than a million people die due to road accidents every year; if we do not do anything about it by...

-The Hindu Business Line While the limitations of the concept of economic growth are acknowledged, we need a better index than HDI Despite claims that economic development as a branch of economic science emerged only in the 1950s, there is no doubt that the notion of development existed even in classical economic thought processes, emerging from the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The recognition of development economics as a discipline...