-The Hindu A lack of sufficient funds, rampant payment delays and abysmal wage rates are to blame The ?11,000 crore fraud that diamond merchant Nirav Modi is said to have created is a figure that needs to be put in perspective. The total amount of wages pending under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme for the whole country (2016-17) was around ?11,000 crore too. This sum is a...

-Economic and Political Weekly There remain misconceptions regarding farmer suicides. There is a need to set right these erroneous ideas based on scientific studies that have been conducted seeking to devise solutions to address the prevailing crisis of the peasantry in Punjab. Please click here to access the ARTicle. ...

-The Hindu Business Line The surge in non-farm employment has led to a rural consumption splurge, making listed companies bullish Is rural India languishing in abject misery, or is it on a cheerful spending spree? Today you can get diametrically opposing views on this, depending on where you get your information. If you are an avid follower of news, then you would be firmly in the pessimist camp, having read all about...

-PTI New Delhi: Delayed payments under the guaranteed rural employment programme MNREGA fell to a six-year low of Rs 67,956 crore in the last fiscal ended March 31, an SBI research report said today. The amount of delayed payments had touched a high of Rs 2.38 lakh crore in 2015-16. It was Rs 2.08 lakh crore in 2016-17, said the SBI Ecowrap report based on government data. On the other hand, total...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Storms across the country have killed more people since April 11 than all of last year. Since Sunday, thunderstorms claimed 94 lives across six states, taking the death toll in storms since April to 278. Fatalities in the first two weeks of May stand at 223, while 55 people died in April. Last year, storms claimed 197 lives, while the toll in 2016 was 216. The...