-The Indian Express The existing MSP-based procurement system is fiscally unsustainable. The time has come to consider market intelligence-based regulation of crop production Farmers are always in distress when prices of their produce are subdued. The response of governments, obviously prompted by political pressures, has been to sharply hike minimum support prices (MSP) of crops or declare loan waivers. Thus, the current government at the Centre has significantly raised the MSPs of...

-The Indian Express According to the annual report of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), as much as Rs 11,905.89 crore was collected by 11 private sector insurers as premium, but they faced insurance claims of only Rs 8,831.78 crore. Mumbai: ELEVEN private insurers are set to register profits of over Rs 3,000 crore cumulatively from crop insurance business for the year-ending March 2018 as against the Rs...

-The Economic Times The government’s decision to add one more layer of reservations to the existing 50 per cent in government jobs and seats in institutions of higher learning represents political opportunism and amounts to admitting failure to create economic dynamism that would generate quality jobs and meet the aspirations of young India. To create an additional quota of 10 per cent for those with an annual income less than Rs 8...

-The Hindu The Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 2018 increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters The National Democratic Alliance government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target areas that have retained some degree of ecological value to turn them into sites for industrial production. This is despite evidence of the damaging effects of such policies. The latest instance of this is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification...

-The Economic Times The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, passed earlier this month in the Lok Sabha, has created a furore across Assam and other states across India. In Assam, a key coalition pARTner of the ruling BJP, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), quit the state government, accusing the Centre of being anti-Assam. Anti-Delhi rage is not new, whether for AGP or other regional pARTies in Assam. It’s been pART of the political landscape from...