-Livemint.com A NSSO report shows there are significant caste-based differences in economic status of agricultural households in India New Delhi: Social divisions in India’s countryside are a well-established fact. A National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report released last week shows there are significant caste-based differences in economic status of agricultural households in India. Unsurprisingly, lower castes are the worst-off by most yardsticks. A large majority of India’s farmers are finding it difficult...

-The Hindu The restrictions on private vehicle usage may have got most of the media coverage, but are by no means the only steps the government has announced. Nationally, over 35 per cent of urban households own a motorised two-wheeler and just under 10 per cent own a car, jeep or van. In Delhi, where per capita incomes are among the highest in the country, these proportions are much higher: nearly 40...

-Business Standard Looking at economics behind agricultural households, a survey notes that 68.3% of such households still relied on agriculture as primary source of income Rural distress is a known story but a survey by NSSO has revealed the alarming level of fragmentation in farmland and unavailability of jobs. As many as 69 per cent agricultural households own less than a hectare of farmland each, making farming unviable and forcing migration to...

-Livemint.com With rural distress taking a turn for the worse due to weather woes and lower crop prices, farmer unions write to PM demanding constitution of commission New Delhi: With rural distress taking a turn for the worse due to weather woes and lower crop prices, leading farmer unions from across the country have written a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding constitution of an income commission that could...

-Outlook Recent studies point to two areas where NREGS has had an impact — rural education and Naxalite conflict. "Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man."  This rather depressing assessment of the field is the opening sentence of Henry Hazlitt's classic primer, Economics in one lesson. In Hazlitt's view, most economists only measure the immediate impact of their policies. A good economist, Hazlitt contended, looks not merely...