-TheWire.in Announced in the 2018-19 budget, the scheme was meant to provide small and marginal farmers with 22,000 mini APMCs and thus fair prices. But RTI queries show that not a single haat has been developed into an agricultural market. New Delhi: The Centre’s scheme to convert rural haats (village markets) into agricultural markets, which was meant to help small and marginal farmers who cannot access the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC)...

-Scroll.in Often the sole source of income for households in villages, NREGA has been plagued with issues during the pandemic. During the lockdown, an estimated 20 million to 30 million migrant workers returned home, out of work and out of money. Some of them tried helping their families with farming and some even used the skills they had developed to set up new enterprises. But most remained jobless. The National rural Employment...

-NDTV Farmers' protests over the hurriedly passed Farm Bills in the Lok Sabha's monsoon session have been brewing since September. The union government made half-hearted attempts to engage their leaders, failing initially when farmers' representatives objected to being received by bureaucrats and not the concerned minister. The distrust level worsened after the Akali Dal's sole cabinet representative, Harsimrat Badal, resigned. Most saw it as the Akalis belatedly trying to retrieve their...

-Business Standard The tentative data sourced from the GKRA website shows that since June, around 1.10 million works have been completed under the campaign. Much of the Rs 10,000-crore extra allocation for the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA), an employment scheme for migrants thrown adrift by the sudden lockdown in March, will be spent on works done through the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and rural housing project....

-The Indian Express All indications show that an economic revival will take some time — support is required during this period to at least prevent starvation. The effects of the lockdown and the resultant economic crisis continue to disproportionately impact the poor and informal sector workers. Since the lockdown, the Government of India (GoI) has announced relief packages under the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) and Atmanirbhar Bharat. However, numerous studies...