-Livemint.com There has been demands for linking MGNREGA wage with consumer price index-rural (CPI-R) for an annual revision of wages based on contemporary changes in rural geography NEW DELHI: Odisha’s Keonjhar district administration on Friday said it has become the first in the country to provide higher minimum wages to those taking up jobs under the national rural employment guarantee scheme. In a post on Twitter, the Keonjhar district administration said those working...

-Down to Earth The survey also reveals several other shocking facts that fly in the face of government claims on migrants. Eighty per cent migrant workers surveyed by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN), do not have access to government ration two months after the COVID-19 lockdown indicating food distress among stranded migrants to be as high as the first phase of the lockdown. The results are based on 821 distress calls received by...

-The Hindu True self-reliance won’t come from relentless industrialisation, but from localisation and decentralisation, as demonstrated by these remarkable stories of empowered rural communities Not so long ago, Dalit women farmers in Telangana used to face hunger and deprivation. Today, they have contributed foodgrains for pandemic relief. Farmers on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border have been sending organic produce to Bengaluru even during the lockdown. And Adivasi villages in central India are using...

-Down to Earth National Green Tribunal’s 2019 order asking states to identify, protect and restore water bodies underlines the urgency to save them The nationwide lockdown imposed to break the spread of the novel coronavirus disease spread in India brought into light a new, pleasant discovery — improvement in quality of several water bodies and their catchments as a host of industrial activities halted. There is a need to restore and create more...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Huge quantities of cash crops lie unsold across India – like cotton in Maharashtra. A hunger crisis looms, yet farmers in Vidarbha plan to sow cotton, not food crops, once again this kharif season Seventy-year-old Kisan Sakhru Pawar, patriarch of a joint farming family in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, is very anxious. The climbing Covid-19 graph is not the main reason for his anxiety. His concern: unsold cotton. “We have 350 quintals of cotton,...