-OrissaPost.com Bhubaneswar: The state government lost its direction on execution of the biggest rural employment generation scheme–Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). This was indicated in a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report on local bodies for the year ended March 2017. Briefing media about the findings of the audit report, Accountant General of Orissa Madhumita Basu said, “The per annum average income of the households (HHs) in...

-Hindustan Times The study has analysed the inter-state differences in the quality of life and levels of living across the major states of India. A composite quality of life index has been prepared using 17 indicators, covering various aspects like income and consumption level, quality of housing, health status and educational attainment of the population. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh is among the least developed states in terms of quality of life, says a...

-Livemint.com Farmers continue to be vulnerable to frequent episodes of losses that neither the state nor the markets have been able to mitigate The dramatic long march to Mumbai involving thousands of distressed farmers on 12 March is a remarkable feat of peaceful protest against the state, given its apathy towards farmers’ distress as well as its failures in safeguarding tribal land rights. However, what is surprisingly missing in this poignant narrative...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prices available to farmers for their harvest could increase by about 15% as a result of the budget announcement to hike the Minimum Support Price (MSP), according to an estimate prepared by government’s think tank Niti Aayog. This is likely to raise the income of farmers by 24%, it has projected. While proposing three options in a draft document titled “Ensuring MSP Benefits to Farmers”, the...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...