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...
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Costly wheat and the cloud over our daily bread - Sayantan Bera
Wheat prices have stayed stubborny high in India, despite several steps by the government including an export ban and announcing open market prices. - Mint Official figures show that daily retail wheat flour (atta) prices as on 1 February were 22% higher year on year, while wholesale prices were 31% higher. Wheat prices have been inching up through 2022 after a heat wave cut production and pushed the government to ban exports...
More »India had dropped the ball & exported excess wheat in 2004-05. Modi govt shouldn’t repeat it -Shweta Saini, Siraj Hussain, and Pulkit Khatri
-ThePrint.in In 2004-05, lack of information on private trade contracts resulted in much larger quantities of wheat exports than intended. India had to import for years to make up. It is clear by now that Indian wheat production in 2021-22 Rabi season is going to be lower than the government’s second advance estimate of 16 February 2022, of 111.32 million metric tonnes (MMTs). The moot question is by how much? Also, if...
More »On the wheat trail: State granaries under strain, private traders make hay -Sandip Das
-Financial Express Crop loss, lower procurement to deplete FCI stocks; local supplies may suffice for PDS, free-ration schemes At Punjab’s Rajpura mandi, private traders are busy buying the wheat crop brought in by farmers at marginally above the minimum support price (MSP). Traders have been super-active in the mandi, one of the largest centres of wheat trade in the country, and their daily purchases often exceed the official procurement by the state-run...
More »Is the govt. doing enough for the Jan Aushadhi scheme?
On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...
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