-The Hindu Business Line The focus must shift away from sops, to raising farmers’ income by promoting better seeds and rejuvenating soil health Agrarian crisis is staring on our face and, as usual, a flood of familiar suggestions have resurfaced. The political responses have been on expected lines. Fixing MSPs (minimum support prices) at 50 per cent over costs is as disastrous as it can get. There is no inherent incentive in cutting...
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No achhe din for the farmer -Ashok Gulati & Ranjana Roy
-The Indian Express When it comes to agriculture growth, the NDA government compares poorly with its immediate predecessor. The next government must initiate structural reforms, set realistic targets The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released the second advanced estimates of national income for 2018-19, along with the quarterly GDP estimates for Quarter 3 (Q3). The overall GDP for Q3 is down to 6.6 per cent and for 2018-19 as a whole,...
More »Share of tubewells in irrigation rising -Radheshyam Jadhav
-The Hindu Business Line Across India, groundwater schemes are up, but surface water schemes are declining Pune: In 14 years (2001-02 to 2014-15), net irrigation in India increased just 20 per cent, with an alarming trend of Massive groundwater extraction. Per data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, while 41 per cent of the net irrigated area in India got water from tube wells in 2001-02, tubewell irrigation increased to...
More »No shortcuts to income guarantee -Harsh Mander
-The Indian Express Rahul Gandhi’s proposed scheme will do more harm than good if it comes at the cost of existing subsidies for the poor. Congress president Rahul Gandhi signaled the earnestness of his party’s resolve to end poverty and hunger by announcing an untried policy instrument — a Minimum Income Guarantee for the poor. “Millions of our brothers and sisters” could not be allowed to “suffer the scourge of poverty”...
More »Farm subsidy to loan waivers: A race to compensate farmers for their losses -Ashok Gulati
-Financial Express With elections approaching, every party is swearing by farmers and trying to woo them for their votes. The Modi government has already announced a package of Rs 75,000 crore for about 12.6 crore small and marginal farmers. While in absolute terms it looks sizeable, when it is divided by the number of farm families to be covered, it is miniscule—just `6,000 per family per year, which is about 6%...
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