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...

-Reuters/ Business Today The government aims to cut spending on food and fertiliser subsidies to Rs 3.7 lakh crore ($44.6 billion) in the fiscal year from April, down 26% from this year, two government officials said, to rein in a fiscal deficit that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food and fertiliser subsidies alone account for about one-eighth of total budget spending of Rs 39.45 lakh crore this fiscal year, but reductions...

-TheQuint.in After interest payments, Food Subsidies, fertiliser subsidy will be third largest single-budget govt expenditure. With the Government seeking an additional appropriation of Rs 1.09 crore through the first supplementary in the current session, India’s fertiliser subsidy bill is set to exceed Rs 2.37 lakh crore this fiscal 2022-23. Govt Expenditures Going Big on Fertiliser Subsidies Excluding interest, pensions, and mandatory transfers to state governments, the revised budgetary discretionary expenditure is likely to be...

-NDTV.com Here's a story that won't make the 9 pm news. As per reports in a few regional language newspapers (yes, they still have The Spine), the Union is proposing an increase in the prices of rice, wheat and cereals sold through the National Food Security Act (NFSA) by Rs.7 per kg for Priority Households (PHH). Apparently, NITI Aayog has even recommended that the Food Ministry increases the price for sale to...

-Newsclick.in Privatisation of grain procurement and cap on procurement subsidies are among the ideas being floated. Amid a slew of worrying news on the food grain front, the Narendra Modi-led government not only appears to be strangely cool, but it is also throwing up bizarre proposals to change the whole procurement-distribution system. This could be the famous ‘using a crisis as an opportunity’ mode of thinking that has led to catastrophic effects...