-The Financial Express The NITI Aayog must firm up a concrete plan involving the states to deal with monsoon deficiency to avoid all-round confusion. This is an old and oft-repeated story in the media, but worth mentioning here for the readers who have missed it. It goes like this. During the period of erstwhile Planning Commission, one of the officials in-charge of projecting agricultural growth found out an innovative way to do...

-Livemint.com In summary, it is hard to escape the macroeconomic consequences of an agriculture shock, notwithstanding fluctuation-smoothing strategies The monsoon forecast, close on the heels of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy review, has turned all eyes to the farm sector. If the actual out-turn matches the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) predictions — seasonal rainfall at 88% of the long-period average (LPA) for 2015 — it would be on...

-Livemint.com Politicians prefer a short-term response over a more nuanced, structural solution to the problem of rural distress Confirming everyone’s worst fears, last week the India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast a deficient monsoon this year. The next day, some of the newspapers wrongly reported it as a drought (guess breathless reporting is no longer a preserve of the electronic media), adding to the disappointment of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) refusal...

-Business Standard R Nagaraj, professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), had disputed the Central Statistics Office (CSO) methodology on non-financial private corporate sector, which is a segment in the new GDP data. His criticism was mainly on the ground that CSO altered the methodology in 2015 from what was agreed on by a sub-committee, in which Nagaraj was a non-official member, in 2014. CSO gave a rejoinder...

-Livemint.com The RBI norms towards targeted marginal lending for the small farmer is a structural solution to aid them—unlike bailout packages, which provide only short-term relief In its latest overhaul of priority sector lending rules, the central bank has stipulated that lenders should funnel at least 8% of their credit to small and marginal farmers. While the overall agriculture loan growth has galloped over the past decade, the chart shows why...