The budgetary allocation for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) as a proportion of total budgetary expenditure has been reduced marginally during the Interim Budget 2019-20. It may have happened because the coverage of gross cropped area under the scheme could not keep pace with the target that was set during the last two years. The Status of Implementation of Budget Announcements 2017-18, which was presented during the Union Budget 2018-19,...

-The Telegraph For starters, it would alter the prices at which such support was calculated for ensuring a basic real income With Rahul Gandhi’s announcement of the Congress’s “historic decision” to adopt an income guarantee scheme, the idea of a universal basic income, mooted in the Economic Survey two years ago, has suddenly got a fillip. It appears attractive at first sight: its universality avoids the discrimination, exclusion and jockeying that typically...

-The Indian Express Social policy is in danger of getting lost in electoral histrionics. As the country inches towards parliamentary elections, a deep confusion pervades the realm of social policy. When the Narendra Modi government came to power five years ago, there were high expectations of a rollback in welfare schemes. The previous government, so went the story, had gone overboard with social spending, and Modi would set this right. In...

  How is it possible that we get different figures on area brought under micro-irrigation pertaining to the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY)-Per Drop More Crop (PDMC)--a scheme which is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare? The dashboard (https://pmksy.gov.in/mis/frmDashboard.aspx) of PMKSY-Per Drop More Crop clearly shows that 11.25 lakh hectare was brought under micro-irrigation in the financial year 2017-18. Please check chart-1. Chart 1: Physical target versus achievement --...

-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...