-Hindustan Times These sectors deserve consistent support over time to compete internationally since India is lagging behind Manufacturing contributed in 2017 only about 16% to India’s GDP, stagnating since economic reforms began in 1991. By contrast, in east and south-east Asia, the industry share has exceeded 30-40% while manufacturing is 20-30%. India’s manufacturing share of GDP has not moved up at all, though between 2004-05 and 2011-12 manufacturing employment growth was...

-Financial Express With elections approaching, every party is swearing by farmers and trying to woo them for their votes. The Modi government has already announced a package of Rs 75,000 crore for about 12.6 crore small and marginal farmers. While in absolute terms it looks sizeable, when it is divided by the number of farm families to be covered, it is miniscule—just `6,000 per family per year, which is about 6%...

-The Hindu Steps like limited procurement, boosting productivity and consolidating land holdings can help reduce agrarian distress Recently, there has been active discussion on the strategies addressing farm distress. There are media reports that the ‘interim Budget’ may focus on the farm sector among other things. Agrarian distress, in the present context, is mainly in terms of low agricultural prices and, consequently, poor farm incomes. Low productivity in agriculture and related supply...

-The Indian Express Development professionals and policymakers have tried many a scheme to address these issues. One idea that has found resonance in recent times is Farmer Producer Organisations or FPOs. It is well-known that Indian farming is predominantly subsistence-oriented. Over 86% of our farmers operate individual holdings below two hectares, while cultivating 47% of the country’s total cultivated area. The production and productivity of these farms are generally low, and...

  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...