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...

-The Times of India Bengaluru: Midday meals and nutritious milk seem to have done the trick. Not many students are leaving government schools in Karnataka these days due to effective retention strategies, say experts. The number of out-of-school children has come down to 90,000 in 2016 from 7,00,000 in 2001, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) officials. The number of dropouts in 2015-16 was 12,878. Paradoxically, enrolment in government schools, which are in...

-The Hindu Business Line The new scheme offers lower premium, more risk cover and hassle-free settlement Crop insurance schemes have not been a hit with Indian farmers in the past. High premia, limited coverage, complicated ways of assessing losses and delayed payment of compensation have kept farmers away from them. Given the high risk of crop damage in India, with significant loss in food grain production in 18 of the last 54 years...

-IANS NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday unveiled a seven-point strategy to double the income of farmers in six years with measures to step up irrigation, provide better quality seeds and prevent post-harvest losses. "In the past, the emphasis has been on agricultural output, rather than on farmers' incomes. I've set the objective of doubling the farmers' income by 2022," the prime minister told the Bloomberg India Economic Forum here. "I...

-Livemint.com Only Chhattisgarh and Odisha have shown extraordinary success in making public distribution system work efficiently and equitably Across thousands of schools in India, expensive computers, printers and scanners are gathering dust. In many panchayats and other local bodies, such hardwares remain unused. Meanwhile, tonnes of government orders and circulars continue to be scanned and uploaded on official websites, which serve absolutely no purpose to anyone. Computerization, digitization and automation are often seen...