-Scroll.in Many crucial schemes have been allocated less than last time and what the finance minister announced in Parliament. Arun Jaitley invoked Swami Vivekananda to drive home the point that the Budget for 2018-’19, which he presented on Thursday, was aimed at helping rural India and farmers. “Let her arise – out of the peasants’ cottage, grasping the plough; out of the huts of the fisherman. Let her spring from the...

-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...

-Livemint.com Farmers need structural reforms, crop diversification and greater public investment rather than subsidies and price support Indian agriculture has been relatively untouched by the structural reforms that lifted incomes in other parts of the economy. Low farm productivity meant that governments tried to improve the lot of farmers through price policy. The problem is that engineering a shift in the terms of trade through higher support prices usually leads to generalized...

-Livemint.com The committee’s suggestions on major reforms include an overhaul of the Union agriculture ministry New Delhi: In a detailed action plan for doubling farmers’ incomes, a top government panel has proposed major reforms to the existing administrative structure. This includes an overhaul of the Union agriculture ministry, setting up a three-tier planning and review mechanism through district, state and national level committees and an annual ease of doing agribusiness survey. The committee on...

-The Financial Express Pune: Even as the government of Maharashtra is sending its top officials to the national capital to follow up on its proposal to the Centre for the procurement of moong and urad under the government’s Minimum Support Price ( MSP) scheme, farmers have begun distress sales. Maharashtra cooperation minister Subhash Deshmukh said the Centre’s permission is expected over the next two to three days, failing which the state...