-The Hindustan Times About 1.98 lakh farmers committed suicide in India between 2001 and 2012 as the benefits of high growth failed to trickle down to the rural areas, says the India Rural Development Report 2012-13 released on Thursday. Indebtedness and lenders confiscating land have been attributed as the main causes of the farmers' deaths. Around two-third of the farmer suicides were reported from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Depicting the...

-The Business Standard Panel member questioned the choice of sub-components There is some consolation for Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi: Not everyone in a panel headed by Reserve Bank of India Governor and former chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan had favoured the inclusion of Gujarat in the list of less developed states. Economist and social scientist Shaibal Gupta, a member of the panel, had dissented and...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Rural Development Ministry has amended a key schedule of the ambitious MNREGA under which they will be guaranteed compensation in case of technical delays in payment of wages. Regretting that delays have been reported from all states despite clear provisions, the Ministry brought out the amendments stipulating that "if the payment is not made within 15 days of closure of the Muster Roll, compensation at the rate of...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A high-level panel has recommended new criteria for measuring the backwardness of states and proposed the devolution of funds to them through an index that identifies Odisha and Bihar as the least developed states and Goa as the most developed one. The committee had been set up by the government amid demands for "special category" status by Bihar and was headed by the then chief economic...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...