With the farmers' protest against the three new laws and in support of legalising the minimum support price (MSP) going strong, state governments have announced a slew of measures in their annual Budgets to placate farmers. The Centre kicked things off in the Union Budget by assuring farmers that the MSP would continue and coming out with a report card to demonstrate its commitment. However, these efforts don't seem to have yielded tangible results. In their respective Budgets, states chose to go a step further by announcing a variety of measures.

Demoralising the private companies and disregarding their contribution won't do any good to the country or its youth as our experience has shown that private enterprises in mobile manufacturing has lead to every poor family owning a mobile phone now, while the country's private sector in the pharmaceutical space has been serving humanity through vaccines and medicines during Covid times, Modi said.

The survey showed that women workers fared worse than men when it came to employment recovery (53 per cent versus 57 per cent) and urban areas have been much worse hit despite a quicker bounce back.

'We were among the first organisations to voice our opposition to the three Acts long before anyone else and had sent memorandums collected from 3,000 tehsils across the country to the agriculture ministry to amend the Bills, but nothing was accepted,' says BKS general secretary Badri Narayan Chaudhary.

During this time of the year, potatoes and vegetables come from Punjab and Haryana.

Though the Bills of Punjab and Rajasthan have a lot of similarities, the one approved by the Chhattisgarh Assembly is structurally different. None of the three has tried to address a key demand of the agitating farmers in full, which is to make all payments below the MSP, within and outside mandis, illegal.

A closer look at the data reveals that a lot of the items are not part of this calculation. The notable ones include buffalo meat, marine exports, raw cotton, and plantation crops such as tea, coffee, rubber, etc.

'If you see the composition of items which are causing this spike in prices, most of them have little to do with the kharif harvest, except for pulses and vegetables to some extent.' 'I don't know on what basis the government is claiming that food prices will moderate in the weeks to come.'

The reforms will help FPOs procure directly from farmers, something that they have been pressing for long.

Chana is majorly imported from Australia and Tanzania and it attracts an import duty of 60 per cent. A section of the traders is demanding a reduction in import duty to around 35-40 per cent to tide over any shortage of the commodity as the new crop will start hitting the market only around mid-February.

This year, the monsoon was above normal in almost all parts, except in North-West India, which comprises the major grain producing states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, along with states such as Himachal Pradesh, the NCR, Uttarakhand, and J&K.

Foodgrains production in 2020-21 is projected to be a record 144.52 million tonnes, which is 0.80 per cent more than the production in 2019-20.

Almost 63 per cent of the increased allocation of around Rs 1.01 trillion has been spent in the first five months of 2020-21.

Opposition parties have alleged that the two agriculture Bills will undermine the safety net provided to the farmers by the MSP system and will lead to their exploitation by big companies.

However, the growth, driven largely by a bumper rabi harvest and facilitated by relaxation in lockdown, may not have resulted in a big rise in income for a section of farmers.

Though agriculture ministry officials are confident of a bumper harvest due to record increase in kharif acreage, experts and farmers said the on-ground situation in some crops is not that encouraging as incessant rains since the last few weeks and pest attack could impact the final yield.

Only two in every five migrants said they received ration or cooked food from the administration either daily or at times.

Reports said that in Telangana and Karnataka, excessive rains the past 10 days has threatened the standing green gram and maize crops and could negatively impact yields if the skies don't open up. But in the north-west and central parts of India, the resurgence of monsoon could not have come at a better time as oilseeds and pulses crops would otherwise had weathered if the rains didn't revive in August.

The restrictions imposed in March led to a sharp slump in demand from bulk consumers like hotels, restaurants, and roadside tea stalls, as they were forced to shut down. Sales of major milk products such as ice-cream, butter milk, and cheese, which usually spike during summer, also dropped.

The situation could become more acute as millions of migrants who had returned to their villages during the lockdown come back to the towns for higher wages and better livelihoods.