A provision of Rs 15,000 crore has been made in the budgetary estimate of 2016-17 towards interest subvention.
Shiv Sena said that Dalit Prez candidate has been chosen for vote-bank politics.
'This has always been a trend by the ruling party, that they give assurances but never fulfill it.' 'The BJP is known for it as it is their character.' 'They agree when the farmers' movement is on, but turn their backs when the farmers leave.' 'We have to keep a constant pressure on the government for our demands.'
To meet the target, agriculture must grow at 15% compared to average of below 2% over the past four years
'Modi came out with this huge announcement that he has given a historic price rise to farmers.' 'It was actually a fake price. He did not give the price mentioned in the BJP's election manifesto.' 'So, Modi gave an incomplete price rise and publicised it as if he has completed his job.' ''This government has surely proved that it does not care about farmers in any way.'
The IMD attributed the projection to a weakening of El Nio and the Indian Ocean Dipole turning positive.
The stock and foreign exchange markets have had a negative reaction to the government's biggest social security programme, the National Food Security Bill. Food minister K V Thomas questions the rationale behind such a response
'It is a national shame that the only country that enacted a food security act is now better known as the land of farmer suicides. Indian farming can change only if national irrigation policy is implemented in totality,' Dr M S Swaminathan tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Farmers with land sizes less than 0.01 hectare have an average annual income of Rs 54732 and annual consumption of Rs 61296, thereby, a debt of Rs 6564 each year. Compare this with the minimum pay for a government employee, says Devanik Saha.
'According to politicians, farmers are the fourth grade citizens of India.' 'We farmers could meet the prime minister and ministers during Congress rule.' 'But none of the BJP ministers want to even meet us.' 'The prime minister has time only for foreigners, but has no time to meet us farmers.'
'These three commodities have been chosen very well.' 'It is up to the state governments and central government to see how it is implemented.' 'The government has to do some hand-holding.'
Indian farming was transformed after the mid-60s.
'A lot of unauthorised encroachments have taken place in our forest area.' 'The landslides are partly because of such encroachments.' 'The other factor is deforestation.' 'Protection of forest resources is not on the agenda of any government.' 'The damage caused by the rain in Kerala is a man-made factor.'
'People were very upset with the fake promises of the BJP in the 2012 assembly elections as well as general elections of 2014.' 'This vote is against the BJP, Narendra Modi and Anandiben Patel.' 'Modi is the prime minister but in his hometown the Congress is winning. We have has got positive votes.' As the Congress makes gains in the Gujarat civic elections, former state Congress president Arjun Modhwadia explains the reasons for the BJP' s poor show.
PM said Kovind will make an 'exceptional President'.
'In the final analysis, all Budgets everywhere are like the schemes hatched by A A Milne's lovable Winnie-the-Pooh.' 'They may be well-intended, but often go awry.' 'Although Pooh and his friends agree that he 'has very little brain', he is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense.' 'This Budget at a first glance does not appear to belong to that latter category,' says economist Shreekant Sambrani.
'I hope the anger that Gujarat farmers have demonstrated is also reflected in other parts of the country in ensuing elections.' 'Only then will the ruling parties accept that something is terribly going wrong in the hinterland.'
Indian scientists who wrote to the PM last week are not entirely rejecting GMOs but instead asking for caution and further testing to establish their safety.
The work of Norman Borlaug, who helped save billions from starvation, is worth recalling, especially as opposition to gene-modified crops mount, says Shreekant Sambrani.
'The number of deaths attributable to warming is likely to rise in the future.'
'The execution has been 100 per cent faulty.' 'The scheme is also a stupid one, a real Tuglaq Darbar scheme.' 'This way of attacking black money is the most ineffective one.'
The BJP government is no better than the Congress -- as wretched and anti-people. In addition, it is explicitly and aggressively communal, says Venkatesh B Athreya, in a hard-hitting interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the states worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher. In Maharashtra, farmers were killing themselves at a rate that was 162 per cent higher than that for any other Indians excluding farmers. A farmer in this state is two-and-a-half times more likely to commit suicide than anyone else in the country, other than farmers,' says P Sainath.
'A lot will depend on the first Aayog and the power it derives.'
'If the money we spend on importing pulses reach our farmers, there won't be any suicides'
'They don't always agree with our governments, their teachers or their parents, but it is the conviction of their ideas, and their determination to share them with the world that, I believe, is one of the greatest sources of hope for our planet.' 'The colonisation of space, understanding the very building blocks of matter and the universe, utilising our understanding of the human genome to conquer disease -- these are the tasks waiting for a fellowship of minds to realise new triumphs in our collective destiny.'
Ayurvedic expert Dr G G Gangadharan on how the ancient Indian medical practice needs to be propagated in the country of its origin