-The Hindu Business Line The PMUY scheme, under which the poor get subsidised LPG connection, addresses an urgent need. At the same time, it can turn out to be a political masterstroke for the BJP, write Richa Mishra and Debabrata Das The kitchen has always played an important role in Indian politics. Leaders across political parties have cooked their electoral fortunes with the kitchen as the integral ingredient. While some distributed highly...

Amidst the prevailing gloominess over agrarian crisis, a recently released report says that the growth rate of agricultural output in both India and China were the same during 2008-2013. The agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of both these countries on an average grew at 3.3 percent per annum during that period. The latest available data from the 2016 Global Food Policy Report, however, indicates that the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka...

-Business Standard Only 47 per cent of the people with PMJDY accounts have received their RuPay debit cards, while these have been issued to 85 per cent of the beneficiaries Last-mile connectivity pangs have hobbled the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY) in several ways, according to a study by MicroSave for the finance ministry. The scheme has helped improve financial inclusion. But insufficient income for banking correspondents (BCs) and a deficiency in...

-The Indian Express Budget makes the right moves on agriculture, but they may not be bold enough. In the last two weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed three rallies of farmers, one each in MP, Karnataka and UP. Although it was late in the game, as farmers have been reeling under acute distress for two years, yet better late than never. Addressing the rallies, the PM thundered he would like to...

-The Pioneer Ranchi: Tuesday would be a proud moment for Jharkhand when officials of the State would share the mechanism, which is said to have helped in implementing the world’s largest pro-poor scheme — Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) — successfully. The State has been selected alongwith two others to showcase its success in arresting the menace of delayed payment, often blamed for suffocating the rural job scheme. The moment came...