-The Telegraph New Delhi: Those who inhabit the top 1 per cent of the wealth pyramid in India own 73 per cent of the wealth generated in the country last year, an NGO has claimed. In the last 12 months, the "wealth of this elite group increased by Rs 20.91 lakh crore. This amount is equivalent to the total budget of the central government in 2017-18," Oxfam India said in a statement...

-Livemint.com Sluggish wage growth, lower crop planting, fluctuating prices paint a dismal picture for farmers and the agriculture sector New data released by the government on rural Wages, crop prices and sowing of winter crops reveals that rural distress is worsening. Planting of wheat, the main winter crop, between October and early January was 5% lower than a year ago due to lower sowing in Madhya Pradesh by close to a million hectares;...

-Livemint.com There cannot be a solution to the problem of low wage growth in rural India unless opportunities for getting decent and productive jobs are available outside agriculture One of the anomalies that stood out from the broad narrative of rural distress was the stubborn fact that rural Wages were growing, not just in nominal but also in real, or inflation-adjusted terms. And if real rural Wages were seeing higher growth, surely...

-Livemint.com Distress in rural economy is not limited only to the agrarian sector but has also spilled over to the larger economy with unemployment becoming a major challenge 2017 has been a bad year for the economy. The fact that the economy is in crisis, particularly the rural economy, is no longer a matter of statistics. The recent elections in Gujarat have laid bare the fissures in the rural economy that have...

-TheWire.in In January-March 2017, regular jobs rose while jobs for contract workers slowed to 26,000 against 1,24,000 in the previous quarter. New Delhi: The government’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes in November last year affected job creation among daily wagers and contract workers, even as regular jobs continued to grow, shows the latest official survey of enterprises, issued by the Labour Bureau. During January-March 2017, job creation stood at 185,000 against 122,000 in October-December...