-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...

-The Hindu FSSAI’s The Eat Right Movement seeks to push manufacturers and consumers towards healthier choices The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently started The Eat Right Movement, a nationwide campaign to improve public health and push the food industry to produce healthier choices. Thirty companies, including 18 packaged food companies, have signed various associations with the regulator to bring down salt, sugar and trans fat content in their...

-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...

-Livemint.com The job of policy strategists is always to identify the binding constraints to growth and then try to figure out which policies will help ease them Economists of a certain vintage will remember the old development models in which rapid economic growth was held back by three key constraints. The first was the savings constraint. A poor country such as India could not save enough of its annual national income to sustain...