-TheWire.in The finance minister has made a big announcement on minimum support price, but he should make it clear whether all he is promising is to take the prices back to the UPA-II levels. The government has done it again. Like last year, there has been much hype about a pro-farmer Budget, but in actuality it rests on misleading claims which don’t address the farming crisis. Last year, the agriculture credit target...

-The Indian Express The ambitious scheme aims to cover over 10 crore “poor and vulnerable” families — an estimated 50 crore individual beneficiaries — with coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year. The Niti AAYog is working towards a launch on Independence Day of the government’s latest flagship National Health Protection Scheme, which was announced in the Union Budget Thursday. Top officials in the AAYog said that...

-ThePrint.in Farmers’ bodies and experts say the key to any benefit to farmers lies in how the production cost or the cost of cultivation is calculated. Chandigarh: One of the most significant takeaways from the Union Budget presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley Thursday was the proposed increase the minimum support price (MSP) for all unannounced kharif crops to at least one-and-a-half times the production cost. The announcement is expected to directly impact...

-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...

-The Hindu Business Line ‘Green paper’ says Centre has not helped farmers in crisis; net returns at MSP in last four years much lower than under UPA-II New Delhi: Farmer groups on Tuesday termed the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre the most anti-farmer in the history of independent India and said its budgetary announcements were just grandstanding, with little action or money to back them. Bringing out what they...