-Frontline The BJP-led NDA government has, in the two Budgets it has presented so far, revealed itself to be very different from the pro-farmer image that its leading election campaigner and now Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, projected. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha election states: "Agriculture is the engine of India's economic growth and the largest employer, and BJP commits highest priority to agriculture growth, increases in...
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Failing the farmer -CP Chandrasekhar
-Frontline Outcomes of the patterns of growth induced by neoliberal economic reforms have increased the disproportionality between agricultural and non-agricultural growth, and with costs rising and prices not keeping pace, agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable. FARMERS across northern and central India-in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and elsewhere-are distressed. Unseasonal rains have damaged their standing crop and help from the government has been meagre and slow in coming. This, however, is...
More »Public funds to push neoliberal agenda -CP Chandrasekhar
-Frontline.in The Modi government has apparently realised that the private sector is not up to the task of driving growth. It hopes to fund its neoliberal dream of India becoming the fastest-growing emerging market through a combination of off-Budget borrowing and drastic expenditure reduction in key social sectors. IT will soon be a year since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office at the Centre....
More »Land acquisition: First, sow the seeds of security among farmers -Abhijit Banerjee
-Hindustan Times Many years ago, Jagdish Bhagwati, a very distinguished economist long before he became one of the patron saints of the NDA, published an important paper on what he called Directly Unproductive Activities or DUP. These bore a close relation to what his friend and well-known South Asia scholar, Anne Krueger, had called rent-seeking activities in some slightly earlier work. Both made the important point that the social cost of...
More »Targeted lending to farmers a must -Gopa Kumaran Nair and Nirupam Mehrotra
-The Financial Express In a column in The Financial Express, ("Time to tweak priority-sector lending", goo.gl/6O8AOL, February 6), the author made a case for "tweaking" priority-sector lending (PSL) norms which largely stipulate that the commercial banks direct credit towards certain vulnerable sectors and target population. Specifically, the article argued for revisiting the sectoral targets and cited a reduction in the share of agriculture sector in GDP as a valid reason...
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