-Frontline The new crop insurance scheme introduced by the NDA government in an election year does not provide for a comprehensive coverage of all crops, against all forms of damage and at all stages of the crop cycle. IN AN election year, it is but natural that incumbent governments will introduce welfare policies and schemes. But the problem is that distribution of such largesse in a neoliberal dispensation can only be...

-Business Standard The state demands that the insurance scheme should cover the produce lying in market yards, waiting to be bought by agencies Chandigarh: The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, hailed as one of the most farmer-friendly crop insurance schemes of independent India, has run into rough weather in Punjab. The state is at loggerheads with the Centre over the efficacy of the crop insurance scheme. "The new scheme provides an indemnity level...

-The Indian Express As it completes 10 years, there is enough evidence to show that India needs the MGNREGA Nearly a year ago, the prime minister made a statement in Parliament about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). He said: “My political understanding tells me, don’t ever stop MNREGA… because MNREGA is a living monument to your [the Congress’s] failures. After 60 years of independence, you had to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-Economic and Political Weekly Agriculture cannot be revived without a different approach to water, soil, crops and research. For the second year in succession, rainfall in the monsoon season has been less than normal. As many as 302 out of the 640 districts in the country have been declared drought-hit and the impact of the drought is the severest in nine major states of south, central and east India. It is striking...