-The Times of India NAGPUR: "Farmers need to increase their land holdings to at least 10-12 acres in order to earn a decent income from agriculture. Unfortunately, not many farmers in the state own land up to this level," said Sukhdeo Thorat, the chairman of Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Thorat, who was speaking at a seminar on farm crisis organized by Dr Ambedkar Agricos Association of India, said the...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Women outnumber men in increasing proportions in India’s rural job scheme, a trend experts call the “feminisation” of the programme. With changes in the labour environment — more men migrating for better wages — more women are working as labourers for additional household income. The scheme, launched in 2006, had less than 20% women in its workforce in the initial years but after a decade, 56% of jobs...

-Livemint.com Madhya Pradesh is leading the way in setting up custom hiring centres, which rent out machinery to small farmers and employ rural youth to manage them Bhopal/ New Delhi: The frown on the face of Shakti Singh Tomar belies his recent successes. A 44-year-old farmer from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, Tomar proudly says he purchased a Mahindra Bolero SUV in 2014 by paying Rs. 8.1 lakh in cash. “Unlike others, I...

-Business Standard The efficacy of farm debt waivers is ambiguous, but it has proved to be a potent potent weapon in the run-up to elections With elections round the corner in agrarian states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, his party’s Punjab chief ministerial candidate Amarinder Singh and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal are trying to woo farmers of the two states with promises of farm...

-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...