-Livemint.com Latest data released by ministry of agriculture shows that sowing of rabi crops, expected to be higher than last year, is still lower than normal area sown That demonetisation will cause Indian economic growth to slow is no longer a matter of speculation. While clear estimates of the extent of deceleration will only emerge after some time, preliminary estimates of automobile sales and the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for manufacturing...

-Livemint.com Only 23.6% of farmers enrolled for the scheme in 2016, against 22.2% in 2015 New Delhi: Despite setting an ambitious target to cover half of all farmers under crop insurance, the first season rollout of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) has been tepid. According to the agriculture ministry, during the kharif 2016 season beginning June this year, 32.6 million farmers enrolled under PMFBY. While that is a 6.3% rise in...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement demonetising high denomination notes on November 8, 2016, will do little to address the prime objective of flushing out black money but will adversely affect the economy in the short term, especially the informal sector, which is predominant in India, says M. Govinda Rao, a Member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission and Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public...

-TheWire.in A large chunk of India’s farmers continue to depend on commission agents and not formal institutions for credit, thereby relying on cash. It is now official. Demonetisation has led to an implosion of agricultural trade in the country. In the week following demonetisation, soyabean arrivals in select major states had collapsed by 87% relative to average arrivals over the week preceding demonetisation. The figures were 55% for paddy, 61% for guar,...

-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru/ Ahmedabad: Though acreage under the main rabi (winter) crops, such as wheat, gram and mustard continued to rise, overall sowing for the season across the country has turned sluggish as cash-strapped farmers have slowed down planting. According to preliminary data released by the Agriculture Ministry, acreage under rabi crops till November 18 stood lower, at 241.73 lakh hectares, compared to 243.38 lakh ha in the corresponding period...