Recent studies and media reports have confirmed that Indian farmers are facing non-remunerative and sometimes falling prices. A past news alert by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicated deflation in wholesale prices of 8 kharif crops (viz. maize, arhar, moong, urad, groundnut, soybean, sunflower seed and Niger seed) on average between 2016-17 and 2018-19. Based on data analysis, that news alert also demonstrated how the rural areas have witnessed...
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PM Fasal Bima Yojana is suffering from low coverage since the last 2 years
The budgetary allocation for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) as a proportion of total budgetary expenditure has been reduced marginally during the Interim Budget 2019-20. It may have happened because the coverage of gross cropped area under the scheme could not keep pace with the target that was set during the last two years. The Status of Implementation of Budget Announcements 2017-18, which was presented during the Union Budget 2018-19,...
More »MSP was not 1.5 times the cost of production for most kharif crops during the last 6 agricultural years
In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...
More »The political economy of the persistent agrarian crisis -Himanshu
-Livemint.com Loan waivers and the promise to raise MSP cannot solve the problem The victory of Congress party in the recent assembly elections of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has brought the agrarian crisis in rural areas to the centre of political debate. While there are several factors in election victories, the severity of the agrarian unrest was surely a major factor. While there is consensus that the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party...
More »How the Sabarmati became a sewer -Himanshu Kaushik
-The Times of India AHMEDABAD: For a long time the perils of dumping untreated faecal sludge into our rivers has been ignored in our government policies. Today, this neglect has manifested to become one our gravest public health threats. And now research has found the highest concentration of highly antibiotic resistant E.coli bacteria just besides Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram on the riverfront. It is exactly here that the Chandrabhaga drainage spews out...
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