-Firstpost.com The recent increases in minimum support prices have attracted two criticisms from two opposite sides. One is that this is less than what farmers deserve, the second is that this is populist and ignores larger macro side effects. The increase in fair remunerative price for sugarcane has also been criticised for not adequately addressing the woes of the sugar sector. Ramesh Chand, member, agriculture, NITI Aayog talks to Firstpost on...

-Newsclick.in Govt. buys only about one third of the total rice and wheat produced and MSP is paid for that only. The recent announcement of Minimum Support Prices for 14 kharif crops including paddy and many Coarse Grains has been met with a frenzy of self-congratulation by the Modi govt. and the BJP, egged on by an embarrassingly sycophantic mainstream media. Many have however pointed out that the declared MSP is...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government on Wednesday raised the minimum support price for the common variety of paddy by what it described as a "historic" margin, seeking to address rural disquiet that the BJP has identified as one of its weaknesses in the run-up to key elections. However, a powerful lobby of farmers has termed it a "jumla" (an idiomatic expression that loosely translates as a hollow promise or...

-PTI New Delhi: The Centre today asked state governments to provide home delivery of highly subsidised foodgrains to the PDS beneficiaries to avoid instances of starvation death. These were among other reforms the state governments have been asked to pursue urgently in order to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) — also called ration shops. The matter was discussed in detail with state food ministers meeting here in the national capital. “We...

The country’s agrarian sector in the last financial year expanded at almost half the rate at which it grew in 2016-17, shows the recently released provisional estimates by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). As compared to a growth rate of 6.3 percent witnessed in 2016-17, the growth rate in real Gross Value Added (GVA) by the agrarian sector (i.e., increase in agricultural GVA after neutralizing the effect of price inflation)...