-The Hindu Business Line Urban-rural wage gap highest in the North-East and northern States New Delhi: That rural employment, particularly in the informal sector, will fetch lower incomes, does not always hold true. In fact, hired workers in the informal sector in rural Gujarat earned twice as much as their counterparts in urban areas, a recent report of the National Sample Survey Organisation show. Hired workers in rural Gujarat’s informal sectors earned about...

-The Indian Express As many as 11,46,768 farmers from Vidarbha and 10,83,932 from Marathwada will have their loans waived. Western Maharashtra, which is economically most prosperous, has a relatively lower number of beneficiaries, with 7,391,48 farmers making it to the list. Mumbai: With the government announcing that over 35.11 lakh farmers across Maharashtra who have outstanding individual loans up to Rs 1.5 lakh will benefit from its loan waiver decision, more...

-GovernanceNow.com Banning cattle slaughter, like demonetisation, may deliver political gains but will hit the rural economy hard More than a century ago, a team of officials from Brazil toured some villages of Kheda district, in central Gujarat. They had come to procure breeding bulls of the famous Kankreji breed, notes Bhailal Patel, a charismatic institution-builder who was also the first leader of opposition in Gujarat assembly, in his memoirs. It was of...

-TheWire.in/ IndiaSpend About half the cases of cow-related violence – 32 of 63 – were from states governed by the BJP at the time, eight were run by the Congress and the rest by other parties. Muslims were the target of 51% of violence centered on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017) and comprised 86% of 28 Indians killed in 63 incidents, according to an IndiaSpend content analysis of...

-VillageSquare.in Farmer producer companies have started to play an important role in procurement from smallholders, which guards against price crashes that has been plaguing marginalized farmers across the country despite record harvests The agricultural seasons of 2016-17 (Kharif and Rabi) have not been favorable for farmers across the country. In spite of the near-normal monsoon rainfall in India in 2016 coupled with record farm production, wholesale and retail prices for agricultural commodities...