-Down to Earth Government spending has led to demand growth in rural areas; but what if it comes down? Rural India has emerged as the saviour of the shattered Indian economy. From Ratan Tata to the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, everybody is betting on the consumption demand growth in rural areas to boost the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic-stricken economy. There is a lot of talk on the ‘green shoots’...

-CaravanMagazine.in “The Thakurs in the village threatened me and said, ‘We will beat you so much you will go bald,’” a middle-aged Nishad resident of the Peshawa Mai Ghat village in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, told us. The Nishads are a riverine community who were categorised as a Scheduled Caste in the state in 2019. On 30 May, the Nishad man’s minor daughter was found raped and murdered a...

-Down to Earth The use of synthetic chemicals for agriculture was halted completely in 2005 by the Union territory Lakshadweep, after Sikkim, is on its way to become 100 per cent organic. The Union territory’s agriculture department had submitted a proposal to the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, seeking to declare its entire 32 square kilometre geographical land area as organic. The proposal was approved October 26, 2020 after receiving required certifications...

-The Hindu It can be made workable if there is political will and fiscal resources As economies around the world struggle to recover from the double whammy of a pandemic and a lockdown, unemployment is soaring. In India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the promise of jobs and the politics of unemployment have a long history. Can a citizen demand work as a right, and...

-The Indian Express The RBI, however, said the economy will break out of contraction of the six months gone by and return to positive growth in the October-December quarter of 2020-21. Mumbai: The Indian economy likely entered into a technical recession for the first time in history at the end of the first half of 2020-21, according to the Reserve Bank of India. After an unprecedented decline of 23.9 per cent in GDP...