In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...

-The Hindu Business Line If the Centre had stuck to its ‘minimum government’ promise, it may have met the note-ban Goals – without the pain In a New Year’s Day interview to a news agency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revisited his government’s demonetisation move of November 2016. Perhaps this was born of the realisation that the notebandi decision and its impact on the economy would likely define the NDA government’s term in...

-Down to Earth The circular economy of cattle has ruptured, threatening livelihoods of India’s poorest. The value output of the livestock economy is Rs 9.18 lakh crore, managed mostly by small and marginal farmers It is almost a year since Rahamdin Khan hasn’t got any good sleep. A resident of Khoabas, a bucolic village of 500 households at the foothills of Aravalli mountain range in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, Rahamdin witnessed a cruel...

-The Indian Express Lowering production costs, and a policy shift from ‘managing shortages’ to ‘handling surpluses’, is the way forward for Indian agriculture The government wants farmers’ incomes to double in five years by 2022. While a laudable objective, the reality today is that farmers are suffering stress, if not shrinkage, in their incomes. The demand for loan waivers, and political pressures to implement these, is only a reflection of this...

-The Economic Times With the general election a few months away, the central government has begun crunching the numbers in preparation for a comprehensive programme to help farmers tide over challenges posed by a dip in prices and dwindling incomes. The government is keen on a more substantive intervention than a loan waiver at the central level to alleviate agrarian distress besides stepping up investments in the sector, having concluded that writing...