Doubling farmers’ income

Apropos ‘Policies to double farm income can be improved upon’ (January 11), while agriculture has continued to remain one of the brightest spots in the country’s economy, the income of the farmers has not witnessed a proportional increase. The ambitious goal of the Modi government to double the income of farmers by 2022 remains an elusive dream. Concerted measures to improve the income of farmers with a thrust on encouraging them to deploy modern farming techniques.

M Jeyaram

Sholavandan, TN

High-value farming

The past policy for development of the agriculture sector has focused primarily on raising agricultural output and improving food security, but explicitly undermined the need to raise farmers’ income.

As a result, farmers’ income remained far lower than of those working in the non-farm sector. However, the agricultural sector needs to adopt a multi-pronged approach such as diversification to high-value agriculture with greater market access.

N Sadhasiva Reddy

Bengaluru

India-China trade

This refers to ‘Imports from China, a big worry’ (January 11). India’s trade deficit with China is now the highest among all its trading partners. Apart from India’s increasing dependency on China, the continued refusal by China to do bilateral trade in domestic currencies has put enormous pressure on the rupee-dollar exchange rate, which has wide implications on the Indian economy. Such high trade deficits serve as a setback to India’s efforts on internationalisation of the rupee, which the government is increasingly focussing on. The ensuing Budget should provide tax incentives to sectors which majorly account for trade imbalance.

Srinivasan Velamur

Chennai

Joshimath tragedy

This refers to ‘What led to the sinking of Joshimath’ (January 11). The Central Government needs to go to the root of the problem so that future occurrence of subsidence in other hilly regions can be avoided. We must not forget that cracks were appearing for some time in Joshimath town, but no one seems to have given the required attention. As many as 610 of the 4,500 buildings have been categorised as unfit for habitation.

Bal Govind

Noida

CCI appeals

This refers to ‘It is wrong to penalise CCI appeals’ (January 10). The article criticises the proposal in the Competition Amendment Bill to make parties appealing against the CCI ruling deposit 25 per cent of the amount. Firstly, it is interesting that the Competition Law Review Committee made this recommendation based on which the legislative proposal was mooted. The writers do not mention this crucial detail.

Secondly, the authors say that CCI has been able to recover only 1 per cent of the penalty imposed so far.

In fact, this makes a compelling case to force parties to deposit 25 per cent of the penalty imposed when in matured jurisdictions the infringing parties have to deposit the entire penalty amount before filing the first appeal (EU).

Further, the suggestion that the informant can file an appeal without any deposit whereas opposite party has to deposit 25 per cent of the penalty is misconceived as the informant is not subject to any penalty amount.

Abhishek Nair

New Delhi

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