-The Hindu Business Line Scars on agriculture supply chain remain a pain point for commodity prices Bengaluru: A year after demonetisation, the cash-intensive agriculture sector is yet to fully recover from the impact. Cash continues to be the preferred instrument for rural and farm transactions, while alternatives such as cheques and bank transfers are seen making their presence felt in some quarters. The cautious agri-trade is still seen struggling with inventory management, as the...

-Scroll.in The state’s expenditure on agriculture and irrigation has fallen since 2013-’14. In the run-up to the Gujarat assembly elections, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on October 16 announced that his government would offer interest free-loans to farmers who borrow up to Rs 3 lakh and pay the amount back on time. Many Opposition politics criticised this as a populist measure, aimed at garnering votes for Rupani’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Reducing the interest...

-PTI After demonetisation last November, the Narendra Modi government has pushed banks into deploying millions of points-of-sale (PoS) machines to encourage online payments Mumbai: The government’s digital payments push, mainly online card payments through point-of-sale (PoS) machines, may leave already capital starved banks bleed by a whopping Rs3,800 crore annually, warns a report. After demonetisation last November, the Narendra Modi government has pushed banks into deploying millions of points-of-sale (PoS) machines to encourage...

-The Hindu An immediate stimulus is needed to regain the momentum to get India back to 8% growth The government’s move this past week to publish economic data for the April to June quarter of this year needs a look. The real growth of GDP, i.e. after removing the impact of inflation, was only 5.7%, much lower than expected. For the past six consecutive quarters, the growth rate has gone down steadily,...

-The Hindu Strengthening the repayment capacity of farmers by improving and stabilising their income is the only way to keep them out of distress Indian agriculture is characterised by low scale and low productivity. About 85% of the operational landholdings in the country are below 5 acres and 67% farm households survive on an average landholding of one acre. More than half of the area under cultivation does not have access to...