-Frontline.in To rural India, which is already reeling under multiple crises, demonetisation has come as yet another blow. WHEN the Prime Minister made the decision to withdraw Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes, he did not quite factor in the impact it would have on agriculture. Despite the rhetoric the concept of digital wallets has not yet entered rural India unlike in much of the country’s urban areas, and much of rural and...

-The Hindu Centre relaxes curbs, allows farmers to buy seeds with old Rs. 500 notes. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley directed commercial bank chiefs on Monday to focus their attention on rural India’s cash crunch over the next 40 days, with a war chest of Rs. 35,000 crore for providing credit to farmers by December. The Centre also relaxed its demonetisation policy for high-value currency notes further by allowing farmers to buy seeds...

There are reports from all over the country that the recent decision by the government to demonetise currency notes of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 1000/- denomination has affected everyone. However the consequence of this financial measure is lopsided and it will be mainly borne by the farmers, informal sector workers, women and the financially excluded.   Please check the links/ urls below this news alert to know everything about demonetisation. Till a few...

-The Indian Express Agriculture’s contribution to poverty reduction is five times more than that of metropolitan centres Speaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading. A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over...

-The Indian Express The opposition’s main contention is that the GM mustard hybrid incorporates three alien genes — barnase, barstar and bar — rendering it inherently unsafe for human and animal health. Fifty years ago, Union Minister for Food and Agriculture Chidambaram Subramaniam took the decision to import 18,000 tonnes of seeds of Lerma Rojo 64A and Sonora 64 wheat from Mexico. The seeds arrived just in time for their planting in...