-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Raising farm income could well be the agenda for 2019 general elections and well aware of this is the Narendra Modi government, which is leaving no stone unturned to lure this vote bank. Navigating this agenda for the government is Radha Mohan Singh, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. Aware of the challenges of the price sensitive market, Singh said, “agriculture markets cannot be...

-howindialives.com/ Livemint.com The recent protests by the Marathas might have roots in the declining returns from farming across Maharashtra between 2006-07 and 2014-15 Falling farm incomes in rural Maharashtra might be an important factor fuelling the current spate of protests by the Marathas, who are demanding reservation in educational institutions and government jobs. The net returns from farming, or wholesale prices minus costs of production, declined for most of the major crops...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...

-Livemint.com Together with large stocks of sugar and higher planting of sugar cane, the surplus situation in Indian agriculture is set to worsen, fuelling another round of farmer protests as states like Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan goes to polls Pune/ New Delhi: Karan Ramdas Atole’s dairy farm is a neat brown square of cleared ground surrounded by lush green sugarcane fields. A mechanical engineer by training, 25-year-old Atole took a loan...