-Moneycontrol.com With priorities of the government changing, the agriculture sector is unlikely to see any major initiatives and reforms Inflation based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) for November is further proof that agriculture produces only marginal surpluses. Only last year, observers were worried that the planners were not engaged enough to see that India is now surplus with most agricultural commodities. Please click here to read more. ...

-The Indian Express Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’? The existing 1966 law already provides for regulation of the quality of seeds. What does the new Bill seek to change? The current Act only covers “notified kinds or varieties of seeds”. Thus,...

-The Telegraph An over six-year low of 4.5 per cent The Narendra Modi government’s bluster on the state of the Indian economy was bottled on Friday after the National Statistical Office (NSO) came out with data that showed growth in the second quarter had sunk to an over six-year low of 4.5 per cent — the slowest expansion in 26 quarters. The sharp slowdown was triggered by a contraction in the manufacturing sector...

-The Indian Express All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards. This will ensure that farmers do not use the loans for non-agricultural purposes. Normally, a sector’s credit off-take is a sign of its health. Higher the off-take, the better the sector’s performance. There has been a healthy off-take of ground-level credit (GLC) in agriculture and allied sectors. In the financial year (FY) 2018-19, banks disbursed Rs 12.55 trillion...

-The Indian Express Discussions of rural poverty fail to factor in multi-dimensional changes in the sector in the last five years Rural poverty in India has been the subject of discussion in recent times. Low increase in prices of agricultural commodities and the slower increase in rural agricultural wages have been seen by some as signs of a crisis for the rural poor. Many acknowledge the role of pro-poor public welfare...