New Delhi — India will boost farmers’ returns by increasing purchase prices for crops by more than 50% of the output cost, a move aimed at fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of doubling farm incomes by 2022. The government will increase the minimum support price for monsoon-sown crops such as rice, soybeans, cotton and pulses, said the country’s finance minister Arun Jaitley, who presented the government’s budget in parliament for the financial year beginning April 1. The announcement meets the ruling party’s pledge on farm incomes in its 2014 poll manifesto. Farmers are agitated over falling commodity prices and high debt levels. Bumper harvests, boosted by a normal monsoon in 2016 after back-to-back droughts and good rain last year, have hurt prices of several crops. Depressed levels, combined with poor arrangements for government-assured purchases, triggered protests by farmers at a time when Modi’s party faces as many as eight state elections this year and the nat...
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