-The Economic Times The government plans to revive cultivation of crops that make Punjab's iconic "makki ki roti and sarson ka saag" -- maize and mustard -- along with horticulture and fodder to breathe life into the stressed soil and the rapidly depleting water table in the green-revolution state. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is pushing hard for crop diversification in Punjab and has appointed an inter-ministerial panel on crop diversification led by Agriculture...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Cash transfers to tame food price spiral-Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini
-The Economic Times Food inflation in India, as measured by food articles price index, has averaged 11.3% for the period FY 2008-09 to December 2012, with a maximum of 15.6% in 2010-11 and minimum of 7.3% in 2011-12. In December 2012, wheat prices stood 23% higher than in December 2011, and rice prices 17% higher in the same period. Although this spurt in wheat and rice prices in the face of...
More »Dent in anti-poverty scheme due to NREGS: report
-The Hindu Hyderabad: An anti-poverty project to transform the lives of ultra poor families has failed to make an impact and increase the net income of the targeted families in Medak district in the State at the end of four years. The project sponsored by the World Bank and the Ford Foundation was aimed at graduating 426 households from extreme poverty to a more stable state by enabling them establish micro-enterprises through...
More »MNREGS killing entrepreneurial spirit of rural AP, says study
-The Times of India HYDERABAD: The UPA government's petprogramme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) - may have been started with the objective of securing the livelihood of the residents of rural India by providing assured employment for 100 days in a year, but has ended up choking the entrepreneurial spirit in the hinterlands ofAndhra Pradesh. These are the findings of a study conducted by a faculty of...
More »Food for granted-Sebastian PT, N Madhavan and E Kumar Sharma
-Business Today What does the proposed food security law mean for the government's finances? Most days, around half a dozen middleaged men in Tamil Nadu's Nemam village head for a slushy pond. They are farm labourers who have had little work for the past few months because of a drought in their Tiruvarur district. As an alternative they catch fish, but the income from it is not enough to survive on. "But...
More »