-The Tribune Demonetisation didn’t overly impact the sector, but devitalisation is a concern THERE has been a lot of speculation about the extent of damage due to demonetisation on agriculture. Small farmers suffered most because cash in hand means a lot to them. They were unable to pay for inputs like fertilisers, seeds and farm labour and experienced low demand for their perishable produce. The latest data from government’s agricultural ministry however...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Retail inflation cooled to five-year low in January on the back of sliding vegetable and food prices but the lurking price pressure may prompt the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to maintain a wait-and-watch policy on interest rate for now. Data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Monday showed inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), rose 3.2% in January, slower than...

-The Hindu Business Line Superfood moringa is proving to be a boon for subsistence farmers Names like PKM 2, Bhagya KDM 1, Rohit 1, Siddhi Vinayaka.... may not ring a bell among urban readers, but those engaged in subsistence farming will recognise these as the high-yielding varieties of Moringa olifera (drumstick tree). This tree (called murungae in Tamil) has been around for ages, but ever since the world at large claimed moringa as...

-NDTV The rock-star days are back for Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, who had maintained a studied silence ever since India scored an economic self-goal over his head on 8 November 2016. His ambitious Economic Survey, released on Tuesday, includes a much-awaited presentation of the Finance Ministry's thinking on Universal Basic Income (UBI). Contrary to some media reports, the Survey does not advocate a specific plan for UBI in India. Rather,...

-The Hindu The interaction between people and land is as old as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers started to settle down in the Neolithic transition and practise agriculture, they began to change their relationship with land in a major way. Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500 years ago, many plants were domesticated for agriculture. These and the associated social and technological changes led to dense human settlements that then paved the...