-Outlook India Sandeep Chachra is Executive Director, ActionAid Association and Co-chair of the World Urban Campaign, UN-Habitat. He discusses and expresses views of the ground reality of the success behind punjab's Agriculture Industry. "Microfinance companies are breaking our backs.  Many women in our block have taken loans that they can't repay.  During COVID, these loans have swelled up, and the company agents threaten us, take away our belongings, our gas cylinders.  I...

-The Tribune Target 12 lakh hectares | Land under DSR 72,000 hectares Chandigarh: The state government has extended the deadline for farmers to opt for Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR) to June 30 after its ambitious plan to bring 12 lakh hectares under the water-saving technique has come a cropper. Official sources say that of the targeted 12 lakh hectares, only 72,000 hectares have been brought under the DSR. With paddy transplantation set...

-Hindustan Times During the Covid pandemic-induced lockdown in early 2020, nearly 25,000 migrant workers reached Saharanpur on bicycles while heading back to their native places in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from their places of work in Haryana, punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Meerut: The Saharanpur district administration has auctioned 5,400 bicycles left behind by migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar while rushing home during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of...

-The Tribune With policy-backing, subsidies and availability of easy credit, farmers are being pushed to buy more machines. punjab has five times more tractors than required. As more technological gadgets and machines are promoted, farmers are increasingly sucked into a debt cycle, while equipment manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank. At a time when farmers across the world are struggling to recover their cost of production, an Oxfam report...

Every year in the month of either February or March, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) announces the notified MGNREGA wage rates (i.e., notified daily wage rates for MGNREGA workers) for various states and Union Territories (UTs) for the upcoming financial year. The MGNREGA rates are notified every year based on the increase in Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL). Like the previous years, in 2021 too, experts and civil...