In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...
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Farm loan waivers are not the panacea -Anjani Kumar & Seema Bathla
-The Hindu Business Line The Centre and States must eschew the politically expedient option of loan waivers and look for long-term solutions The sweeping wave of loan waivers has generated serious debates across the country on their economics and likely outcomes. Till date 12 States have announced loan waiver amounting to more than Rs.2 lakh crore. Loan waiver cannot be a solution to address the agrarian crisis, instead the government must look for...
More »Fundamental flaws in crop insurance scheme's design makes it ineffective -Devinder Sharma
-Livemint.com The government did not visualize there were problems in the way it was designed, the methodology itself was faulty Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the flagship programme launched with much fanfare in 2016, has run into rough weather. With both the area covered and the number of enrolled farmers declining, the country’s premium crop insurance scheme is certainly in need of an overhaul. While Parliament’s committee on estimates, chaired by senior...
More »A renewed attack on privacy: on Aadhaar Bill -Suhrith Parthasarathy
-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill, allowing private bodies to use Aadhaar as a means to authenticate identity, poses huge dangers On Friday, the Lok Sabha, without any attendant discussion, passed the Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018. On any reasonable reading it ought to be plainly apparent that the Bill flagrantly flouts both the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s judgment which gave the Aadhaar programme a conditional imprimatur. It is...
More »Prof. Abhijit Sen, a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, interviewed by M Rajshekhar (Scroll.in)
-Scroll.in The former Planning Commission member explains why the country needs to tread carefully on this idea. On January 1, when Indian news agency ANI asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the government’s plans to reduce agrarian distress, he said loan waivers do not work as a very small segment of farmers take loans from Banks. “A majority of them take loans from money lenders,” said Modi. “When governments make such announcements,...
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