-The Hindustan Times To check rising public expenditure, the government's two biggest money-spender schemes - subsidised ration for poor and job guarantee in rural areas - will soon be on the Aadhaar-enabled Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) platform. The disbursal of subsidy for cooking gas cylinders will come back on the DBT platform after the previous UPA government decided to put it on the hold just before general elections. The UPA, which started transfer...
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US nudge on WTO position continues -Jayanth Jacob
-The Hindustan Times Not budging from its position, the US remains at the forefront of nudging India to give up its stand on farm subsidies for food stockpiling in order to clinch a trade facilitation pact at the World Trade Organisation. According to sources, US will yet again take up the issue as part of a "larger plan" to get India to drop its position during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to...
More »States say no to extra rice over lack of storage -Sandip Das
-The Indian Express The Modi government's efforts to fight inflation by releasing additional amounts of grain to states under the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) is threatening to unravel, as states are ill-equipped to handle extra allocations. While there are few takers among the states for the extra rice allocated under TPDS, the offloading of wheat stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to bulk buyers has taken off. Analysts say...
More »Reforming agriculture: time for the next green revolution? -Shujaul Rehman
-The Hindu Business Line How ‘Protected Cultivation' can help prevent crop damage due to national disasters While the first green revolution managed to make the nation self sufficient the next round of reforms certainly needs to address the problems faced by today's farmers. According to statistics available on Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India reaped a record foodgrain production of 259.32 million tonnes (mt) in 2011-12. However, the output fell to 257.13...
More »Jan Dhan Yojana: Many questions remain -Ishan Bakshi, Nitin Sethi & Surabhi Agarwal
-The Business Standard Against NDA's 75 million target, UPA added 61 million in 2013-14 The government's financial inclusion scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, is an empty shell at the moment. The government heralded its achievement of clocking 15 million new bank accounts under the scheme by Thursday and looked ahead to the target of achieving 75 million accounts by January 2015. In fact, given that the UPA government added an additional 60.9...
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