New Delhi: India‘s overall subsidy bill may surge by ₹50,000 crore this fiscal year because of increased expenditure on fertiliser, cooking gas and food security. The government expects to meet this higher spending from savings under other heads in its ₹45-lakh crore FY24 budget. Subsidy outgo for FY24 had been budgeted at ₹4.03 lakh crore, … Read more
Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province | Photo Credit: Zahid Hussain Disaster events are not only becoming more frequent and severe but their impact is also expected to worsen. The year 2023 brought an end to the warmest decade on record, marked by unprecedented extreme … Read more
India is ranked at 71st position in the Global Food Security (GFS) Index 2021 of 113 countries, but the country lags behind its neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka in terms food affordability, according to a report. Pakistan (with 52.6 points) scored better than India (50.2 points) in the category of food affordability. Sri Lanka was … Read more
NEW DELHI: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday emphasised that dialogue was the way forward in resolving the issues raised by the protesting farmers. Interacting with a group of ‘progressive farmers‘ at his Hyderabad residence to mark ‘Kisan Diwas‘, Naidu said any issue could be resolved through talks. He pointed out that the government … Read more
By Brijendra SinghPre-Independence Punjab was relatively accomplished in agricultural production. By the 1930s, however, the farming community was mired in indebtedness due to the exploitative nature of the existing system. One of the earliest set of institutional agrarian reforms came about with the Punjab Debtors Act, 1936, and the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act, 1939, … Read more