AWAKENINGS

Budget had focused on the distressed sections of the economy – mainly farmers, informal workers and the rural sector thereby a pro-farm budget. As Agriculture was the distressed section for quite long time, the present budget had concentrated on long term and sustained measures instead of free-bees like farm loan waivers which are poor substitute for lasting solution, but, vote catch mechanism. Arun Jaitley , the Finance Minister, in his 105-minute budget speech at the Parliament House while presenting his budget, used the words like ‘ agri ’ in 38 times, ‘farm’ in 39 times and ‘rural’ in 35 times. That is enough to call this budget as ‘Pro-Farm’. Staying true to government’s electoral promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022, the minimum support price – MSP – of kharif crops and all rabi crops was fixed at 1 ½ times the production cost of the crops. • Linking Gramin Agricultural Markets ( GrAMs ) to the electronic National Agriculture Market