thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog - Tumblr blog

thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Govt’s Big Solar Park Push Could Run Into Land Hurdle

The union cabinet decided last month to double India’s solar power generation capacity, from 20 GW to 40 GW, by setting up 50 solar parks, which are solar projects with a capacity of 500 MW or more concentrated in one area. But this additional 20 GW would mean acquisition of at least 80,000 acres of land, thrice Jaipur’s area, and possibly a problematic move in a land-starved country, as IndiaSpend has reported in January 2017, when talking about canal-top solar installations, where solar panels are installed atop lengths of canal, to save on the cost and conflict involved in land acquisition.

https://twitter.com/PiyushGoyal/status/834460706233688064 Rooftop installations still struggling to take off

The largest contributors to solar energy in India will now be rooftop solar installations (40%) and large solar parks (40%). The last 20% will come from utility scale solar projects, with a very small percentage coming from off-grid solar installations.

Capacity addition of rooftop solar has been slow to take off, as IndiaSpend reported in January 2017. By November 2016, only 0.5 MW of solar rooftop capacity was installed, while 3 GW was sanctioned and under installation, according to this December 2016 MNRE update.

“The decentralised nature of rooftop installations makes progress difficult, because you need to engage about 500 consumers on average (on the assumption that one household installs a 2-W capacity on average) to reach 1 MW, so the administrative process is far more expensive,” said Abhishek Jain, senior programme lead at the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), a research institution based in New Delhi.

Why solar parks are a good idea: Clearances plus infrastructure Large solar parks come with several benefits for individual producers such as land clearances, development of infrastructure such as roads and transmission systems, and water access.

By mid-2016, a total of 34 solar parks spread over 21 states were given approvals. These had an aggregate capacity of 20 GW. Details of state-wise division for the parks show that Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka had the most commissioned projects, as IndiaSpend tweeted on December 1, 2016.

Being part of a solar park also means that it is easier to raise finance at a lower cost for individual producers within the park. It also ensures that off-take is guaranteed, or else underwritten, which again reduces risk.

With the additional 20 GW, the number of solar parks is estimated to increase to 83. Information about areas where these additional parks will be installed, or how the installation mix will change, is not yet available.

Solar tariffs falling, but land acquisition and off-take still hurdles

Solar tariffs in India have been falling since 2010–from Rs 10.95 per kWh in December 2010 to a level tariff of Rs 3.30 per kWh achieved last month by the 750-MW Rewa solar park project in Madhya Pradesh, according to this Business Standard report.

However, risks due to transmission uncertainties, when produced renewable power cannot be sold, delayed payments, and curtailment of renewable power along with weak enforcements of renewable purchase obligations remain problem areas, according to the report.

Solar parks are perhaps currently the best way to produce renewable energy because they take care of problems faced by smaller producers, which include non-reliability with off-take of produced power, and problems of land acquisition, which is becoming increasingly problematic.

“Land acquisition poses a challenge for developers but solar parks enable developers easy access to land, clearances, and evacuation infrastructure. As seen in the recent Rewa solar park bid, the risk of curtailment has also been eased by a 100% payment guarantee offered by the state government,” Kanika Chawla, senior programme lead at CEEW, told IndiaSpend.

As a general rule, one MW of ground-mounted solar installations require about four acres of land, down from five acres due to advancements in solar cell technology, as IndiaSpend reported.

“Whether the capacity is added under utility scale projects or large solar parks, their land footprint would be similar. Solar parks result in economies of scale being realised for land, evacuation infrastructure, and the balance of system, which results in the per unit cost of solar power coming down,” Chawla said.

[ Source Code : http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/govts-big-solar-park-push-could-run-into-land-hurdle-53779 ]

#indispend #solarparks #solartariffs #onlinejournalism #indiajournalism

0 notes

thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Why A Rich, Orderly Himalayan State Has India’s Highest Suicide Rate

Here in Jorethang, a border town 70 km south-west from the state capital, Gangtok, Babita, a Nepali migrant who grew up with her father and step-mother in a Darjeeling tea estate, was 16 when, during a trip home to meet her mother, a stalker raped her.

“I was so little, what did I know about the law,” said Babita, a slender, feisty woman who dropped out after grade X. “I couldn’t take it anymore and asked the guy to marry me.”

Babita’s husband, a drug user and peddler, has physically abused her almost every day since then.

In 2006, she began abusing pharmaceutical drugs. “Life has been hard. When I can’t hurt others, I hurt myself,” Babita said, showing me the cuts on her left wrist. She tried committing suicide several times by hanging herself, overdosing on drugs, and even brutally hurting herself with a knife once.

“God kept me alive,” she said.

Not everyone is lucky enough to survive. Bishal Sherpa, a former drug user and outreach worker at the Hope Foundation, a Jorethang-based NGO, shared the story of his younger brother, Vicky, also a drug user, who hung himself in 2015.

The dark, hidden side of India’s golden state

Drugs. Suicide. Attempts at suicide.

These are not stories India associates with the northeastern, landlocked former monarchy of Sikkim, often termed the golden state for its run of progress after its integration into India in 1975. With just over 600,000 people, Sikkim is India’s least populated state and the smallest after Goa.

Sikkim is India’s third-richest state (after Delhi and Chandigarh), by per capita income. Its literacy rate is India’s seventh highest. In 2008, it was declared India’s first open defecation-free state. In 2016, it became the country’s first and only organic state, and it topped a 2016 nationwide survey on states with the best working conditions for women.

These achievements hide stories like those of Babita and Vicky. Behind the state’s prosperity and cleanliness, we found a state awash in drugs and suicides.

Despite all-round progress, Sikkim’s suicide rate was 37.5 per 100,000 people in 2015. That’s not just more than triple the Indian average of 10.6 but way above the global average of 11.4. Sikkim’s unemployment rate is also India’s second highest (after Tripura), more than three times the national average of 5%, and the state reports widespread drug abuse.

There are 1,026 injecting users registered by the National AIDS Control Organisation, but most drug users in Sikkim abuse drugs orally, and with a government that treats drug-addiction purely as a law-and-order problem, violating its own rehabilitation laws in the process, there is, currently, no stemming the tide.

A social worker in Gangtok (who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his association with a government project) acknowledged the lack of data. By his reckoning, and that of other social workers, at least seven of 10 teenagers in Sikkim abuse pharmaceutical drugs.

Are drug use and unemployment related? They appear to be.

27% of Sikkimese who committed suicide were unemployed

A fifth of the world’s suicides were related to unemployment, and suicides increased nine-fold after the global economic crisis in 2008, according to this 2015 study. The link between unemployment and suicides in Sikkim appears strong.

More than 27% of those who committed suicide in Sikkim in 2014 (67 of 244 suicides) were unemployed, according to 2014 National Crime Records Bureau data.

Punjab and Manipur, states with rising literacy without jobs, have a high rate of drug abuse, as IndiaSpend has previously reported. Sikkim is now one of three states struggling with drugs caused by unmet aspirations.

Suicide was the leading cause of death in India, occurring most frequently among educated young adults in the country’s most rapidly developing states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, according to this 2012 study, which used data from a 2010 cause-of-death survey.

“The most obvious explanation is that the distance you fall when you hit the ground of reality is greater when your aspirations have been built up by opportunities that in reality don’t exist,” one of the researchers said in this interview to The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.

The findings of this study offer insight into the crisis in Sikkim, where between 2006 and 2015, suicide was found to be most common in the 21-30 age group. The high expectations and vulnerabilities of those born after the state’s merger with India in 1975 have resulted in them turning to drugs and suicide, said Kunal Kishore, a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) official.

“Sikkim opened up very recently to the outside world, but it has focused on speedy economic development at the cost of its people,” he said. “The state has neglected social aspects in the process.”

‘When I was growing up, I thought my life would be beautiful’

Prashant Sharma once hoped to become a pilot.

The son of a former army officer, in the 1990s he was studying in a good government school in a small town in East Sikkim district.

“When I was growing up, I thought my life would be beautiful,” said Sharma, 33, an executive member of the Indian Drug Users Forum and coordinator for the Hepatitis Coalition of Sikkim (HepCos).

He was first introduced to pharmaceutical pills in the eighth standard. Most students received little attention and abusing drugs was common. The habit was fuelled further when his parents separated. When Sharma went to rehab and tried to give up drugs, he found no support from the society or government programmes and no job opportunities.

“I was seeing all these social and cultural changes in the state. There was widespread development,” said Sharma. “People now have more expectations, but these have not been met, so you begin to look for an escape.”

While there are similarities between Sikkim and other states with high suicide rates and drug abuse, said Nancy Palmu Chankapa, a clinical psychologist in Gangtok, stressing it wasn’t possible, yet, to pin a single reason for the state’s high suicide rate. Several cases that she has dealt with have been related to family problems, alcohol abuse, mental illness, and extra-marital affairs.

My investigations–focussed on the link between drug abuse and suicide–across South and East Sikkim districts show that suicide and drug abuse were indeed linked. Several young addicts spoke of the pressure of unmet expectations.

I spoke to about 15 former and current drug users in Sikkim, all of whom began abusing pharmaceutical pills as teenagers, and were suicidal at some point in their lives. Pharmaceuticals are the key to Sikkim’s drug problem.

Why abuse of pharma drugs is common in Sikkim

A few meters from Babita’s home in Jorethang runs the river Rangeet. Police officers stand guard here because across the river and past a dense forest lies West Bengal. Jorethang residents can cross over by foot or by boat to buy cheap, easily available pharmaceutical drugs.

Most Sikkimese drug users choose cheap pharmaceuticals instead of deadlier options, such as heroin. India is the third largest producer of pharmaceuticals in the world and some of this is diverted for drug abuse.

There are little data on the subject, but according to this 2011 UNODC study, many drug users in the country have shifted from narcotics to pharmaceutical abuse.

The medicines prone to abuse include codeine-based cough syrups, spasmo-proxyvon (SP), a pain killer that India banned in 2013 for containing an opioid, and Nitrosun (N10), a hypnotic drug used to treat insomnia, anxiety and epilepsy. These drugs, although unavailable over the counter in Sikkim, can be easily bought across the state, into which they filter from West Bengal. Siliguri, about 116 km south of Gangtok, remains the main transit point.

While Sikkim has a history of alcohol abuse and the use of cannabis, drug abuse in Sikkim has only increased substantially over the last five years since large pharmaceutical companies moved base to the state to take advantage of a 10-year tax exemption, said Kishore. There are now about 15 such companies in the state. This has led to increased diversion of legal pharmaceuticals to the illicit market.

But Sikkim’s larger problem is that the government almost entirely ignores the state’s drug problem.

Why drug abuse often leads to suicide in Sikkim

Health worker Sherpa cannot forget the last time he saw his brother Vicky at the Namchi district hospital. Vicky was on oxygen but still gasping for breath.

“The doctor barely checked him, did not even change his oxygen cylinder. He would have lived if they had treated him right,” Sherpa said, his voice shaking. A case of suicide was registered with the police, but Sherpa has yet to get a post-mortem report or death certificate, despite repeated requests.

Sikkim’s otherwise progressive outlook on social and civic reforms does not extend to dealing with drug abuse. It treats the problem purely as a law-and-order issue.

In India, between 2004 and 2014, suicides connected to drug abuse exceeded those related to dowry, poverty and financial issues, according to this 2014 Hindustan Times report. At least 25,426 people committed suicide due to drug- and addiction-related problems over this period.

The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, criminalises drug use, but a 2014 amendment provides for pharmacological options for treatment of drug dependence. A distinction is now also made between users, peddlers and smugglers; sentencing depends on the type and quantity of drug seized.

The NDPS Act allows for states to have their own drug policy. In 2016, Nagaland released its own drug policy, which emphasised education and awareness. Punjab has a separate fund for detoxification and rehabilitation, but the state’s war on drugs is more a war on addicts, this 2016 Indian Express investigation revealed.

Sikkim was amongst the first states to draft a drug policy but its act, the Sikkim Anti-Drugs Act (SADA), 2006, makes no distinction between drug users and peddlers. It criminalises drug use, imprisons addicts for small crimes and offers little help in rehabilitation or recovery. The state’s public health system too is indifferent to the health issues faced by drug users.

Under SADA, a drug user can be fined upto Rs 10,000 and be disqualified from applying for government jobs. A state government employee booked under the Act is liable to be imprisoned for up to six months, dismissed and pay a higher fine, up to Rs 20,000. The Act empowers designated officers to enter, search, seize and arrest without any warrant or authorisation.

“Drug users cannot really be imprisoned, but usually they double up as small-time peddlers to make some money. So, when someone is found with substance, police officers add other sections and put them in jail,” said Khilburna Gurung, senior superintendent of police at the Central Jail in Gangtok. “Unless the law is amended, this will keep happening.”

On its Facebook page, the Sikkim Police, which launched a “special drive against drugs” in March 2016, regularly posts photos of those caught with pharmaceuticals booked under SADA.

Despite law, Sikkim says it does not fund care of drug users

“As per the UN international drug conventions on drug control, of which India is a signatory, SADA is harsh, and does not support the health and human rights of drug users who need treatment,” said Kishore, the UNODC official. “Drug users as well as smugglers and mafia are being tried under the same sections of the law here, which is similar to what is happening in Philippines.”

There are no government funds for the education, treatment, aftercare, rehabilitation and social reintegration of addicts, the state’s department of healthcare said in a right-to-information reply to a query filed by HepCos. Under SADA, these programmes are supposed to be running.

The state’s attitude has pushed drug abusers further into the shadows. “By criminalising users, Sikkim has failed to handle the issue with sensitivity. As a result, there is no awareness and drug users are discriminated which often pushes them onto the streets, to sex work, and suicide,” said Kishore.

Long imprisonment affects chances of rehab

Having lost his parents as a child, Rajesh, a driver, lived with his brother’s family. He has not seen them in three years.

“In the long time that I’ve been here, I’ve seen so many people who were arrested under SADA get bailed,” he said in an interview at the central jail. “But I am poor and unfortunate.”

Gurung, the police officer, admitted that those who were rich and well connected often got bail within a few days for being arrested for drug offences, while those who were poor and partly educated stayed in jail, even if innocent. On average, Gurung said, the central jail usually has 25 to 35 inmates held under SADA.

After a meeting organised by the Sikkim State Legal Service Authority (SLSA) in 2016, officials and civil society members decided that inmates should receive medical counselling while in jail. More than 30 sessions have been conducted since September 2016, said Gurung, but these sessions have not been of significant benefit, according to feedback he received.

Rajesh, who has attended all the sessions, said he would rather have received counselling prior to being convicted or after being released. “How will society accept me now?” he said. “I am a criminal to them.”

Prakash (name changed), 24, was sent to Jagriti Integrated Rehabilitation Centre for Addicts (JIRCA) in Gangtok for a four-month recovery treatment after being arrested under SADA. His brother-in-law, a police officer, ensured he wasn’t sent to prison, said Prakash.

“About 10 of my friends got worse after they served prison sentences, four of them tried to kill themselves,” said Prakash, a college dropout who once helped his family run a dairy shop. “I have tried committing suicide in the past. If they had put me in jail, I wouldn’t have given up drugs, but staying here has helped me.”

Help centres are out of medicines, bandages

In addition to JIRCA, there are about seven other rehabilitation centres in Sikkim. Robin Rai, who works as a counsellor in one of the rehabs, is also a staff at the 24×7 Crisis Centre, a suicide prevention helpline run by the NGO Drishya Foundation and funded by the state government. The centre is run out of the psychiatric ward of the government-run Sir Thudop Namgyal Memorial (STNM) Hospital in Gangtok.

Started in April 2015, the helpline has received more than 120 calls so far, but Rai admitted that receiving calls from drug users is rare. Callers usually have marital or relationship problems, are dealing with a chronic illness, or are troubled by unemployment.

Rai, 39, took to pharmaceutical drugs as a teenager and then struggled for over 15 years to give up the habit, a struggle that pushed him to failed suicide attempts. “In most instances here, drug overdose deaths are not accidental but suicide cases,” said Rai. “But there is so much stigma around them that these cases go unreported.”

A large number of drug users that Rai has counselled in the rehab have been suicidal, and yet the only times when drug users were brought into the crisis centre in STNM hospital–four times as Rai recalled–were as emergency cases, after they were found by their families.

In a section of Majigaon, a locality in Jorethang, known as ward no 3 and 4, and clustered with one-room shanties that house around 2,500, I saw empty strips of pharmaceuticals littered across the area. A 15-year-old boy, who admitted to regularly consuming marijuana, told me that almost every resident there abused drugs.

A drug peddler told me her son killed himself when in his 20s.

Although the area has a high concentration of vulnerable drug users, when I visited, there was no naloxone available to treat overdoses and no bandages or medicines for abscesses, bacterial skin infections that form when drug addicts use infected needles or inject insoluble components.

Women users face particular discrimination

“When I can’t sleep, I write,” Babita said, pulling out a diary and flipping the pages to show me poems written in Nepali.

Babita is literate and vocal, an active supporter of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, a local political party. She has big dreams for her children. As for herself, she counts herself lucky for not being pushed to sex work for money.

About 9.8% women in Sikkim (of 150 participants) were injecting drug users, according to this 2015 UNODC study. It includes the case study of a 32-year-old drug user who was made to forcibly have sexual intercourse with strangers for money by her husband. Fear of discrimination and stigma kept her from seeking help from the police. She was depressed and suicidal, and said there were many others like her.

Most female drug users are either divorced or in unhappy marriages, said Rinzing Bhutia, a research-team member of the UNODC study.

“When I went to rehab in 2005, after six years of abusing prescription drugs, there were four other girls my age. But today, I am the only one who’s fine,” said Bhutia. “Two of them went missing and their families never even inquired. One was most likely trafficked, and another lost her sanity after she was sexually harassed and shamed. I had a good counsellor who kept in touch with me regularly and made sure I didn’t give up. I got lucky.”

Three rehabilitation centres in Sikkim accept women, Bhutia said, but many women who get dropped off at the centres by husbands or families are never taken back by them and fall back to drugs.

“The government wants Sikkim to be known as a pollution-free, disease-free state. But I work with young men and women every day, and they are constantly struggling,” Bhutia said. “Sikkim will lose its people if it doesn’t act now.”

Some names have been changed to protect the identity of sources.

(Santoshini is an independent journalist based in Assam, reporting on human rights, development, and gender issues. She was also the 2016 Bitch Media Writing Fellow in Reproductive Rights & Justice.)

[Source : http://www.indiaspend.com]

#himalaya #indian journalism #online journalism india #state

0 notes

thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog · 8 years ago

Link

India’s first data journalism initiative that builds on open data to report on and analyze a wide range of issues for fostering better governance, transparency and accountability.

#online journalism journalism india Farmers Tax Exempt Indian economy news

0 notes

thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog · 8 years ago

Text

6 Challenges For The New Uttar Pradesh Government

With a population of 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil but with an economy the size of Qatar’s–which has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnore–the new government of India’s most-populous state faces a myriad of problems.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is comparable to Kenya’s, and its infant mortality rate rivals Mauritania, a poverty-ridden, west-African nation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented victory in UP in the 2017 assembly election, winning 312 out of 403 seats–77.4% of all assembly seats–but with some of India’s worst development indicators, there is much to do.

We analysed six major challenges and the corresponding promises made by the BJP to fix them in its election manifesto, called the ‘Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra-2017’.

1. India’s second highest maternal mortality, half of the child population stunted

Despite having the largest population, UP spends Rs 452 per capita on health, 70% less than the average spending by states.

One in two children in the state is not fully immunised, and the state has India’s second highest maternal mortality rate (258 deaths per 100,000 live births) and highest infant mortality rate (64 deaths per 1,000 live births), according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).

UP Has India’s Worst Infant & Under-Five Mortality Rates

Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16

There are 84% fewer specialists than needed, 50% fewer nursing staff, and the lowest share of health workers (19.9%) in India, found an analysis by the Observer Research Foundation in February 2017.

As many as 46.3% of UP’s children are stunted (low height-for-age), 17.9% are wasted (low weight-for-height) and 39.5% of its children are underweight, according to NFHS-4.

What the manifesto said: The BJP, in its manifesto, has promised to have a primary sub centre in all villages with the latest equipment and technology. Further, it promised to set up 25 new medical colleges and specialty hospitals and one hospital at par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in every six blocks.

The BJP has promised to turn UP into a malnutrition-free state in five years.

2. Low learning levels, high absenteeism in the state with 21% of India’s child population

UP has achieved high enrolment of children in primary school, with 83.1% of primary school-aged children enrolled in school in 2015-16, according to the data from the government’s Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE).

Major issues for the new government now include low learning outcomes, high absenteeism, and lower enrolment in grade VI and further–60.5% of upper-primary school-aged students enrolled in school in 2015.

In 2016, about half (49.7%) of grade I students surveyed in households in UP could not read letters, while 44.3% could not recognise numbers up to nine, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizen-led assessment of learning in rural India, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2016.

The survey also found that a little over half of students (56%) were present in primary school on the days of the survey.

Source: Annual Status of Education Report, 2016

What the manifesto said: The BJP manifesto on education is labelled “improvement in quality of the education sector”. It majorly concentrates on inputs–free education, books, uniforms, teacher-student and classroom-student ratios, along with laptops and free internet for college students, and a Rs 500 crore scholarship fund for poor students.

3. High youth unemployment, high migration to other states for jobs

The low quality of education in the state (and dearth of jobs) is reflected in UP’s high unemployment. In 2015-16, more people per 1,000 were unemployed in UP (58), compared to the Indian average (37). Youth unemployment was especially high, with 148 for every 1,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 years in UP unemployed, compared to the Indian average of 102, according to 2015-16 labour ministry data.

UP’s Unemployment Problem

Source: Ministry of Labour and Employment data here and here

Between 2001 and 2011, over 5.8 million people between the ages of 20 and 29 years migrated from UP in search of jobs, but, for most of these migrants, low educational attainment likely resulted in low-paying jobs in the informal sector.

Voters recognise the lack of jobs as a major issue in the state. As many as 20% of voters surveyed said jobs were the most important issue this election year, according to a FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey.

What the manifesto said: The BJP government will create seven million jobs or opportunities for self-employment in the next five years, its manifesto said. As many as 90% of all jobs in industries in the state will be reserved for youth from UP. The manifesto also promises Rs 1,000 crore for a start-up venture capital fund, which will also create jobs for the youth.

4. Industrial growth one of the slowest in the country

UP reported an annual industrial growth (2004-05 constant prices) of 1.95% and 1.93% in 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, according to the NITI Aayog–among the bottom five in the country.

The state is struggling even in industries that have traditionally been strong. For instance, Kanpur’s leather industry is in deep distress with 146 of its 400 leather tanning units shutting down in ten years, IndiaSpend reported in January 2017.

UP ranked 20th out of 21 states on the 2016 State Investment Potential Index, a ranking of states on labour, infrastructure, economic climate, political stability, governance, and perceptions of a good business climate.

The index, released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, identifies a shortage of electricity and vocationally trained people as the main concern in the state.

Source: National Council for Applied Economic Research

What the manifesto said: The BJP manifesto promises to triple current investment in the state by the creation of an investment board. Further, it calls for a single-window clearance department, headed by the chief minister, for industries. The manifesto also promises to build six information technology parks in the state, a pharmaceutical park, and a dry port connected to a sea port to encourage exports from the state.

5. UP has 20% of India’s agricultural households, but slow agricultural growth

By 2012-13, UP, with an estimated 18.05 million agricultural households, made up 20% of India’s total agricultural households. Three out of four rural households in UP depend on agriculture, making agricultural reforms a key agenda in one of India’s most fertile belts.

For the nine years between 2004-05 and 2012-13, the agriculture and allied sector in UP recorded the slowest compounded annual growth rate of 2.9% (out of all the BIMARU states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP), below the national growth rate of 3.7 %.

UP recorded a growth rate of 4.2% in agriculture and allied activities (constant 2004-05 prices), slower than Uttarakhand, formed out of UP in 2000, which recorded a growth rate of 5.12%, and Madhya Pradesh, which grew at 18.85%, in 2014-15.

Outstanding farmer loans in UP stood at nearly Rs 75,000 crore as of two years ago, Business Standard reported on March 15, 2017. Of these, a little more than 10%, or Rs 8,000 crore, was loaned through state cooperative banks or primary agricultural credit societies, which are the only loans that the newly formed government can choose to waive off–the other loans are controlled by scheduled commercial banks. This amount includes loans to all farmers in the state, and not just small and marginal farmers.

What the manifesto said: Under agriculture, the BJP manifesto promises that all agricultural loans will be waived off for small and marginal farmers, while future loans will be provided interest-free. The new government will also create a roadmap to double agricultural income in the state by 2022.

Further, the BJP promised to pay sugarcane farmers in India’s largest sugarcane-producing state within 14 days of the sale, while also coordinating with mill owners and banks to repay previously owed amounts to sugarcane growers within 120 days of forming the new government.

6. More than half the households unelectrified, progress slow with corruption and red tape

In UP, power cuts were the leading election issue for one-third of voters polled, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2017.

UP remains one of India’s most poorly electrified states–with 51.8% of rural households unelectrified–despite having the third largest installed coal capacity in the country at the end of January 2017.

Corruption and red tape within electricity distribution companies, which are responsible for the timely disbursal of funds for electrification projects, are a major factor in the lackadaisical progress of electrification across the state, as IndiaSpend reported in March 2017.

Source: Ministry of Powe

What the manifesto said: Every household in the state will be provided with 24-hour power supply, while poor households (below the official poverty line of Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas) will be given electricity connections free of cost. Poor households will also be provided the first 100 units of electricity at a discounted rate of Rs 3 per unit.

We welcome feedback. Please write to [email protected]. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

#coverstory #UP #government #news

0 notes