-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru: Prices of tur (red gram) continue to rule below the minimum support price (MSP) levels in Karnataka, though procurement of the pulses crop is seen registering a 10-fold increase in the current year over the previous high. As a result, the State is approaching the Centre to increase procurement by another 1.5 lakh tonnes while extending the purchase period by a month. “The procurement we have done this...
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The Aadhaar of all things -Shriya Mohan
-The Hindu Business Line From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project You’ve probably read the WhatsApp joke about a post-Aadhaar scenario in 2020 India. A man orders pizza over phone. He is asked for his Aadhaar...
More »Why Are Banks Deducting Money From Farmers' Accounts Without Permission? -Nitika Kakkar and Deepak Vaishnav
-TheWire.in Banks are deducting ‘crop insurance premiums’ from farmers’ current accounts without their knowledge. In the Bhivani district of Haryana, a 49-year-old farmer, Bansi Lal, complained that Rs 2,480 was deducted from an account that was linked to his Kissan Credit Card (KCC), without his knowledge. Upon enquiry, the bank informed him that the money was deducted under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY). But when he told the bank that...
More »Feeding insecurities -Reetika Khera
-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...
More »Sustainable Agriculture: Punjab's search for a less water-guzzling, yet high-yielding paddy -Divya Goyal & Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express A new 125-day rice variety promises to provide some respite to Punjab farmers, depleting aquifers Ludhiana: A new variety maturing within 125 days, yet yielding nearly as much as those now grown over 135-160 days, could provide the ultimate solution to Punjab’s woes stemming from farming of water-guzzling paddy. Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) has released a paddy variety PR-126 that gives an average of 30 quintals per acre. This is...
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