-The Economic Times BENGALURU: As the central government devolves more fiscal freedom to the states, they seem to be cutting allocations to social sectors, especially agriculture and allied areas in response, according to the initial findings of a study. The Narendra Modi administration wants to empower states further as part of a push toward cooperative federalism. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's February budget cut allocations to the states by more than half in...

-The Hindu The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employee Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) has generated more rural employment than any other government scheme or private initiative in the history of independent India. At the same time, it has also generated a great deal of controversy over its merits and demerits. It would be fair to say that the policy establishment in the country right now is not favourably disposed towards the MGNREGA, with the...

-Economic and Political Weekly This paper presents estimates of farmers' incomes from agriculture over the past three decades. The income earned by farmers from agricultural activities after paying for input costs and the wages for hired labour has seen low to high growth in different periods during the last three decades. In none of the periods do farmers' income or profitability of farming show any squeeze. The pace of growth in...

-The Indian Express Dealing with the farm distress, while simultaneously creating enough non-farm job opportunities, is going to be a tough task. Call it bad luck or otherwise, the Narendra Modi government’s first year in office hasn’t been a really great one for agriculture and rural incomes. To start with, rainfall was deficient in both the south-west (June-September) and the north-east (October-December) monsoon seasons by over 12 per cent and 33 per...

-The Indian Express Modi government has damaged the rights-based legislative framework without spelling out what will replace it. No  one in the last two decades has come to power with greater euphoria than the Narendra Modi sarkar. It has taken less than a year for that euphoria to recede and change to disappointment. There are sufficient reasons for this change. The celebrations of the first year in office of  this government are in sharp...