The Print

Raghuram Rajan ought to be taken seriously because he advances robust arguments: benefits of such a waiver often go to the best connected, it creates enormous stress for the fiscal health of the state government and it inhibits investment down the line. Bankers have often argued that loan waivers hurt credit culture and thus harm rural banking and, eventually, work against the farmers themselves. Agricultural economists tell us that farm loan waivers cannot solve the crisis of Indian agriculture.

The Hindu Business Line

Since the 1970s, agriculture in many States has been receiving electricity at either low tariffs or for free. Much of this supply is un-metered. Due to the lower tariff and poor revenue collection, agricultural sales are often seen as a major reason for the financial losses of distribution companies ( discoms). Part of this loss is then recovered through higher tariffs for other consumers like industry and commercial (called cross-subsidy), and the remaining through direct subsidy from the State governments.

The Economic Times

Technologies developed by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) have significantly contributed in increasing agriculture production, said Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh. He said that schemes like – Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture (ARYA) scheme and the student READY (Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana) scheme were proving to be very effective in attracting rural educated youth to agriculture.

MoneyControl

The sadness of 2019 will begin when it becomes an act of repetition. The first example one can think of is the fact of stubble burning and the blame game that followed. The year 2019 will repeat the same ritual of indifference. The pollution reports will intensify the sense of indifference and politics of monotony and children’s lives will continue to be devalued, India will continue to be the casualty capital of children below six. Politicians will savour it as a Guinness Book statistic and life will go on.

The Times of India

A way forward, the Aayog broadly expressed the need for implementation of its ‘Action Plan for Biomass Management’ to eliminate problem of stubble burning setting up of task force to control pollution from brick kilns, taking effective measures for disposal of waste and converting vacant space in urban areas into urban greens among others. 

Business Standard

Furthermore, the report suggested that the national capital had the highest annual population-weighted mean Particulate Matter 2.5 last year, followed by neibhouring Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana. All had mean values greater than 125 µg/m3. Of the 1.24 million deaths attributable to air pollution, more than half were people below 70 years. “In India, the major sources of ambient particulate matter pollution are coal burning for thermal power production, industrial emissions, construction activity and brick kilns, transport vehicles, road dust, residential and commercial biomass burning, waste burning, agricultural stubble burning, and diesel generators,” the study stated.

India Times

As citizens fall ill after inhaling soot and PM 2.5 levels, stubble burning has added to north India’s pollution woes. The burning of rice straw or stubble burning has put the farmers under a scanner, while they say that the pollution in Delhi-NCR is due to continued emissions and not because of some seasonal crop burning.