-The Hindu * What’s the problem? The year 2017 was marked by several farmers’ protests nationwide, with a few turning violent. Last month, in New Delhi, 184 farmer groups came together from Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Telangana to take part in a ‘protest walk.’ The protest once again highlighted the plight of farmers and the extent of agrarian distress. The agriculture sector is characterised by instability in incomes...
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How PDS can be made effective through better governance -Anjani Kumar and Seema Bathla
-The Financial Express The Odisha experience shows that PDS can PLAy a pivotal role in bringing convergence and making India’s two important missions—food and nutrition security—successful in a short time. New Delhi: India’s public distribution system (PDS) is the largest food security programme in the world, which covers nearly 60% of the population and costs Rs 1.45 trillion—close to 1.4% of the national income. PDS has often been criticised for its structure,...
More »Proposed scheme to address agrarian distress is impractical and does not touch on systemic issues -Roshan Kishore
-Hindustan Times The Indian farmer needs to sell his produce with as little intermediation as possible in order to make decent profits. One of the biggest roadblocks for this to happen is lack of mass demand for the majority of farm produce Faced with the spectre of rural anti-incumbency after the Gujarat results, the Modi government is in firefighting mode. Reportedly, a scheme is being PLAnned to provide partial support to state...
More »Sex crimes against SCs/STs rising since 2014, experts say it's power PLAy -Sanya Dhingra
-ThePrint.in According to NCRB data, 13.9 per cent of all atrocities against SCs and 14.8 per cent of all crimes against STs were rape or sexual assault. New Delhi: There has been a long-held – although disputed – feminist argument that rape is about power, not sexual gratification. India’s latest crime statistics seem to back this belief, experts said. Since 2014, sexual violence against the Scheduled Castes (SC) has been the most dominant...
More »The rise and fall of the WTO -C Rammanohar Reddy
-The Hindu As the U.S. loses interest in multilateralism in trade, India should actively try to arrest the organisation’s slide Less than 25 years after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created, its future as a body overseeing multilateral trade rules is in doubt. The failure of the recent ministerial meeting at Buenos Aires is only symptomatic of a decline in its importance. Too ambitious? When the WTO was born in 1995, rePLAcing the...
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