The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has recently made an upward revision to the growth to be experienced by the agrarian economy in the present crop year (viz. from July, 2017 to June, 2018). The growth in real Gross Value Added (GVA) by the agrarian sector as a whole is expected to be 3.0 percent in 2017-18 as per the second advance estimates of national income for 2017-18, which was released...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-Down to Earth Corporate India gets indirect subsidy equivalent to 60 per cent of government expenditure on rural areas A recent analysis has revealed a shocking injustice being done consistently to rural India by the government with corporates getting subsidies at its expense. The Inclusive Media for Change, a New Delhi-based non-profit has analysed the last seven Union Budgets. It has found that indirect subsidy, termed as “tax expenditure” that was given...

-Livemint.com The strategy for doubling farmer incomes will differ from state to state, and from one region to another even within a state After two consecutive years of drought, in 2014-15 and 2015-16, farmers of many crops were hit by low market prices in several states in 2016-17. In view of widespread discontent, there is a sense of urgency about addressing their issues. Therefore, the conference organized by the Ministry of Agriculture...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: The Agriculture Ministry has broadened the scope of the proposed Contract Farming Bill by bringing marketing and services into its ambit and cutting back on States’ role in regulating the sector, paying heed to a multitude of responses that the planned piece of legislation elicited. “On the basis of the great response it received from stakeholders, we have made many changes to the Bill. There is...