-The Indian Express Despite so many initiatives and schemes aimed at financial inclusion, only 40.90 per cent of SMF could be covered by the scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), the report submitted by the RBI panel has said. The Reserve Bank of India’s Internal Working Group (IWG) to review agricultural credit — headed by Deputy Governor MK Jain — has raised several concerns on the farm front as lakhs of small and...

-The Indian Express Essentially, the ONORC scheme has been launched keeping in mind the internal migration of our country. Last Friday, the government launched the pilot project for the inter-state portability of ration cards between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and between Maharashtra and Gujarat, as part of its ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ scheme. “It is a historic day. We have started off inter-state portability of ration card pairing two states...

-The Indian Express The SECC has identified a total of 1.82 lakh households where at least one person is employed in manual scavenging in rural India, numbers which have been dismissed as gross underestimate by organisations working in the area. The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has issued orders to all states to use the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) so as to identify persons working as manual scavengers, persons with disabilities,...

-The Pioneer Government policies for the pulses sector have helped overcome multiple challenges. Effective implementation of an integrated module can solve most farm problems Agricultural transformation is high on everybody’s agenda today. Various stakeholders, including experts, policy-makers and political executives, have expressed their views on how to move forward with agricultural policies so that our farmers can prosper. However, performance of policies and strategies that are already in their implementation stage will...

-Financial Express Farm loan waivers—of more than Rs 850 billion in FY18 and FY19, announced by various state governments—are the flavour of the season. This can affect credit offtake and induce further stress for banks and amount to another agrarian crisis. Farm sector NPAs accounted for 16% of banks’ advances under the priority sector lending in October 2018. Post the early waiver-announcements, credit growth in agriculture and allied activities has been...