-The Indian Express First-ever comprehensive study pegs produce trade losses in mandis from demonetisation at 7-15%. Demonetisation led to the value of farm produce traded in mandis across India collapse by nearly 15 per cent within a week of the decision, with these losses averaging 7 per cent even at the end of 90 days, according to a just-published Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) working paper. The study, which crunches data...

-Hindustan Times The design of large injections of public funds for India’s agriculture economy needs to be informed with rigorous evaluations on what is effective for higher farm productivity. A wage subsidy for farm-labour is one modification that needs an evaluation, to generate evidence to inform how the MGNREGA policy generates employment when there is need, but without stress to farm production Indian agriculture is witnessing a period of complex socio-economic distress,...

-Livemint.com Tractor sales have gone up in a year which has seen farmer protests in several states for remunerative crop prices and farm loan waivers, amid lingering effects of demonetisation and GST implementation New Delhi: Domestic tractor sales rose to a record in the first half of the fiscal year, but economists are hesitating to interpret it as a sign that the farm economy has finally turned the corner. Tractor manufacturers sold 363,071...

-PTI Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says all cities should be mandated to implement clean air action plan in a time-bound manner to meet clean air standards New Delhi: A green body on Tuesday called for the implementation of an emergency plan to address air pollution, after a Lancet Journal report said it was the SECond leading risk factor for health loss in India last year. Expressing shock at the loss of...

-TheWire.in Based on a militarised notion of ‘targeting’, such welfare policies deny citizens the right to basic services. In an incisive analysis on anti-poverty and other social SECurity programmes, Professor Amartya Sen astutely asks why the notion of targeting, which is essentially a military concept, is so routinely invoked in analytical discourses on basic welfare rights for the people as well as in policy framing in this respect. Indeed, why would an...