KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

The Centre will introduce new guidelines for releasing subsidies to farmers for the purchase of farm machinery and tools, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shobha Karandlaje has said. A major portion of the subsidy is at present set apart for the purchase of tractors and farmers are not able to purchase other farm machineries and tools required for their daily work, she said.  The minister asked youth...

-The Telegraph Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav underscores importance of subsidies and pesticides in agriculture in developing countries New Delhi: India has opposed global targets to reduce subsidies and pesticides in agriculture for the sake of biodiversity, asserting that farming provides livelihood to millions in developing countries and that countries should be allowed to determine their national goals. The Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav, delivering India’s national statement at the UN Convention on...

-PTI/Siasat.com Currently, more than 40 per cent of India's total workforce is employed in agriculture, according to the World Bank data released till 2019. Montreal: A numerical global target for pesticide reduction in the agriculture sector is unnecessary and must be left for countries to decide, India has said at the UN biodiversity conference here in Canada. Speaking during a high-level segment of the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the Convention on...

-Deccan Herald One of the proposals under debate at Montreal is a call for slashing harmful subsidies by at least $500 billion annually from the estimated $ 1.8 trillion India has sought more public finance to protect its biodiversity and strongly opposed proposals to reduce subsidies on fertilisers and pesticides for the sake of biodiversity, asserting that the livelihood of hundreds of millions of farmers in the developing world depend on farming.  “Our...