-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Demonetisation and the subsequent push for digitisation has escalated risks relating to cyber crime and India needs to urgently upgrade its defences by setting up a cyber security commission on the lines of the Atomic Energy and Space Commissions, according to an IIT Kanpur study shared with Parliament's committee on finance. Noting that the government has initiated a number of programmes to enhance the participation of...

-The Financial Express Pune: While the sowing area of pulses is up 3.5% across the country, it has gone down by 19.22 % for arhar (tur) , according to latest estimates by the government. The data indicates sowing area of 93.36 lakh hectares for pulses against 90.30 lakh hectares same time last year. For arhar , the area is 29.32 lakh hectares compared to 36.30 lakh hectares last year. Tur sowing...

-Hindustan Times The CSE report shows that insurance companies had only settled 32.45% of the claims made till April 2017. New Delhi: An independent evaluation of the Modi government’s much-touted crop insurance scheme has showed that insurers gained nearly Rs 10,000 crore in gross profit during the last kharif season, from June to November 2016. However, it settled less than a third of the crop-loss claims filed till early this year. The report released...

-Down to Earth Multiple gaps in implementation of crop insurance schemes may have compromised their purpose of benefitting farmers The CAG audit report of the Centre’s crop insurance schemes has highlighted gaps in their implementation that compromise its purpose of providing financial assistance to farmers. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) looked into the performance of two schemes—Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) and the National Crop Insurance Programme (NCIP)...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: Implementation of the crop loan waiver that Yogi Adityanath's government had announced on April 4 faces a fresh threat of delay, this time because of poor Internet connectivity in the border regions. Adityanath had on Friday asked district administrations to collect the loan data from the banks and upload them on their websites by July 31 and then start handing out the waiver certificates. But hundreds of bank branches have...