-Livemint.com The average annual income of agricultural households was Rs 107,172, the National Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 shows New Delhi: Rural households have access to banking and have savings but investment levels and pension and insurance coverage remain very low, a financial inclusion survey conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) showed. At the same time, levels of indebtedness were high and nearly equalled annual incomes, according to...

-PTI The financial inclusion drive has resulted in proliferation of bank accounts in rural areas with 88.1 per cent of households having savings accounts, said a survey by Nabard. Incidence of Indebtedness (IOI), which is a proportion of households having outstanding debt on the date of the survey, was 52.5 per cent and 42.8 per cent for agricultural and non-agricultural households, respectively. All India IOI taking rural households together stood at 47.4 per...

-The Indian Express The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims to identify the causes behind the farm crisis in these regions, says top priority should be given to watershed strategies while planning mitigation measures. Pune: Subsidies and debt waivers cannot resolve the agrarian crisis, according to a study by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE). The study ‘Agrarian distress: Why Vidarbha and Marathwada alone’, which aims...

-Livemint.com It is important to give preference to those approaches that help the poor the most for every rupee spent, no matter how they are labelled Sometimes in life, it is clear that the direct approach isn’t the best one. This is true in many areas, even when it comes to policymaking. Take, as an example, the area of extreme poverty. It seems logical, at first, that the most effective response should...

-Frontline.in The women-led climate-resilient farming model created by Swayam Shikshan Prayog in drought-hit Marathwada has yielded encouraging results and is worthy of emulation across the country. “LOOK at our quinoa. It has grown so well,” says a beaming Shailaja Narwade from Masia village near Solapur in interior Maharashtra. Shailaja has planted the traditional South American plant not for consumption but in order to harvest its seeds. “Quinoa seeds are very valuable...