-Livemint.com The best way to double the Real incomes of Indian farmers would be to halve their numbers through job creation in other parts of the economy The Narendra Modi government last week announced sharp increases in minimum support prices (MSPs) for a variety of farm products. The move itself is not unexpected. The first sign that the Modi government would shift away from its earlier strategy of minimal hikes to douse...

-Hindustan Times The key to this problem lies in the way political and electoral financing are conducted in this country The stranglehold of political parties on the electoral and political system continues to increase with time. The anti-defection law, passed in 1985, formalised the control of political parties even on Parliament. Despite a large number of candidates on the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), the candidates with a realistic chance of getting elected...

-TheWire.in It will greatly bring down the poverty reduction impact of the programme, harm the construction of much-needed rural infrastructure and dramatically diminish the labourers’ bargaining power vis-à-vis the farmers. At the recent fourth governing council meeting of the NITI Aayog, the government announced the formation of a sub-group of chief ministers to propose ways of linking the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with agricultural activities. The group is headed...

-Livemint.com The concerns about the downsides of these schemes are overblown, and they could go some way in alleviating rural woes Since the Union Budget 2018-19, there has been a great deal of discussion in the public domain regarding the health of the rural sector. We believe that the rural sector needs some policy intervention, be it price support or income support. As a case in point, the agri gross domestic product...

-The Hindu Income support must be provided to at least the most vulnerable farmers Our farm policy is so bad, the proverb ‘you reap what you sow’ isn’t true any longer. A bumper crop is no different from a drought, for it too depresses farm incomes. Good rains, excessive sowing and the bumper harvest last year produced gluts in the market that sent the prices of many crops, and therefore farm incomes, crashing....