-Down to Earth States accuse the Centre of not taking any initiative to help them increase production of summer crops   Agricultural experts have warned that an unusually hot March and April this year may cause damage to summer crops, which are grown in the Indian subcontinent between ‘Rabi’ (winter) and ‘Kharif’ (monsoon) crops. States have also accused the Centre of not taking any initiative to help them increase production of summer crops...

-The New Indian Express First, existing studies have analysed the intensity of farmer suicides in isolation, i.e. without comparing farmer suicides with those by other professionals. Farmer suicides have always been a highly debated issue in the public discourse on agriculture sector performance in India. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 3,58,164 people engaged in the farming profession have committed suicide in India from 1995 to 2019. Though these numbers...

-The Hindu Amidst the scattered experimentation now, the Centre must offer strategic policy guidance for inter-State coordination Only two years ago, in the wake of a nationwide lockdown, India was left shocked by the plight of migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres, facing hunger, exhaustion and violence, to get to the safety of their home villages. The dire circumstances of the migrants tugged at our collective heartstrings. They became the focus of...

-The Hindu While National farm income rose 27% between 2015-16 and 2018-19, Jharkhand saw a drop in monthly income by 30% The Centre vowed to double farmers’ income between 2015 and 2022, but by the midway point, farm families in Jharkhand actually saw their average monthly income drop by about 30%.  In its report on the demand for grants for agriculture submitted to the Lok Sabha on Thursday, a parliamentary standing committee asked...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...