Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi virtually launched the Congress party's election campaign here on Sunday with a frontal attack on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), blaming it directly for the distress in the agrarian sector. Accusing the NDA of neglect of farmers, the …
The government has made significant allocations to important developmental and social agenda, and yet provided enough stimuli for continued growth. The budget announced last week by the finance minister sets some important and healthy precedents for the future. It is clear from the budget that the government recognises the additional …
THE Budget 2008-09 was projected long before as a "kisan budget' that would announce relief measures adequate enough to mitigate the misery of our farmers who have been reeling under a debt-trap. The expectations were especially high in the case of Punjab's farmers, whose problems of indebtedness and soaring suicide …
When will the political class realise that govt freebies offer no lasting solution? I owe my first job to the paucity of rural credit in India. The Rural Credit Survey Committee Report was the basis for change in ownership of the Imperial Bank of India into its new avatar, State …
Storage infrastructure and setting up processing facilities for our farm products are major issues and need immediate attention of policymakers to accelerate agricultural growth, says former power minister and MP, Suresh P Prabhu LACK of adequate infrastructure in the hinterland and poor connectivity are major reasons behind slow agricultural growth. …
Loan waiver for farmers is a good beginning M K Venu A former bureaucrat who had worked with finance minister P Chidambaram in 1997 summed up the 2008-09 Budget aptly in the words of Edmund Burke: "Mere parsimony is not economy. Expenses and great expenses may be an essential part …
Holding down inflation and interest rates, energising the production function, pushing investments, saving livelihoods, and raising incomes and consumption became the principal objectives of the Budget. The waiver of farm loans is a means to the accomplishment of these goals. G. Ramachandran First things ought to come first. There is …
A. Vaidyanathan Loan waivers are at best temporary palliatives to the problems facing rural India. Regrettably, the powers that be and the powers that want to be have rarely been willing to confront the difficult and complex problems. The decision to waive farm loans on an unprecedented scale announced in …
Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday blamed the previous regime for the agrarian crisis and inflation, and said the UPA government's "unprecedented' initiative to waive farmers' loans was to meet the "unpaid distress bill' left behind by the NDA government. Replying to the …
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today claimed the political credit for making a speech that not only led to a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) walkout from the Lok Sabha but earned him applause from the Left parties. Days after the government declared it hadn't given up on the Indo-US civil nuclear …
Prior to announcing the Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver package, the finance ministry had toyed with the idea of setting up an Agriculture Credit Guarantee Corporation with a corpus of around Rs 5,000 crore to deal with bad loans. The entity would have insured lenders against borrower defaults with banks …
Even as there were no easy ways of balancing high economic growth with low inflation, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday said the Government would strive to peg the overall growth rate at near nine per cent while containing the inflation rate at close to four per cent. In his …
As the Union Government works out the exact details of the farm loan waiver announced in the Budget, the first concern has been raised by Punjab, which incidentally contributes 50 per cent of the total foodgrain in the national pool. The state has pointed out that local custom ensures that …
MOUNDHALA (BULDANA): His clothes remind me of him,' wails Leelabai, clutching a bundle of clothes in front of the dilapidated structure she calls home, as younger sister Kalabai wipes away her tears. In front of their hut, lay a vast, barren patch of land. On this one-acre plot in Moundhala, …
We are into a period of global food shortage and rise in food prices which were not anticipated even a few years ago. A steeply rising food import bill in the medium term could well be on the cards. This is likely to put a severe strain on the Indian …
A few years ago, while delivering the Palkhivala Memorial Lecture in Mumbai on the then Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's Budget, P Chidambaram made the perceptive comment that it was the most unfunded budget in the country's history. There was no provision in the Annual Financial Statement on many new items …
The Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver for small farmers has not exactly sent farming communities in the country into transports of joy, a dipstick survey by Business Standard correspondents, each of whom interviewed 25 to 30 farmers across India, shows. Some farmers, notably in Orissa, are moderately happy to have debts …
While we all get ready for elections, fiscal rectitude will be a priority for the next government. The curtains have finally come down. The Budget has provided a clear indication of things to come. In a year when 11 states will go for elections and the sword of Damocles for …
BUDGET 2008-09 IMPACT The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver for farmers announced in this year's Budget is being projected as a major achievement of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in his stronghold and sugar cane country western Maharashtra. The minister has unleashed a blitzkrieg of advertisements of his Nationalist Congress Party, …
