-Hindustan Times Farm-insurance claims have risen due to extensive crop damage caused by extreme weather conditions this year, but some farmers are angry at being given a pittance as compensation under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. Krushna Raut, a farmer in Maharashtra’s Parbhani district, stared in disbelief at a message on his mobile phone, which showed ₹1.76 had been transferred to his bank account towards his crop-insurance claim. He first thought...

-Hindustan Times The petitioners had questioned whether the Government carried out any study linking demonetisation as an effective tool to achieve the objectives of curbing black money, terror financing or fake currency. Hardships caused due to demonetisation cannot be the basis for faulting the Government’s 2016 notification to ban currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1000, the Centre told the Supreme Court, adding that the cutoff date December 30 fixed by the Centre...

-Hindustan Times PM Modi had expressed concerns that the utilisation of the funds earmarked for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was skewed in favour of more affluent states instead of poorer states getting more money, two senior officials said, asking not to be named. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged key discrepancies in the jobs guarantee scheme at a recent review meeting on the rural sector, the central...

-Hindustan Times Farm policymaking slowed down after the repeal of three laws in 2021. But the climate crisis, geopolitical instability and inflation have exacerbated the urgency for reforms In November 2021, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi repealed three contentious farm laws in a dramatic turnaround. The entire episode — from the passage of the laws, the protests that followed and the turnaround — had stalled national agriculture policymaking. Yet, as this column...

-Hindustan Times IPCC co-chair Hans-Otto Pörtner said only a massive mobilisation towards transformation of energy use, industry, infrastructure, society and how we deal with ecosystems will keep that limit within reach New Delhi: The 1.5 degree C threshold for global warming, the redline as far as the climate crisis is concerned, may be breached as early as the end of the current decade, two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s co-chairs said. Hans-Otto Pörtner,...