-Newsclick.in Among the total respondents, 15% are from scheduled tribes and 39% are scheduled castes, which is higher than their proportion in the country’s population. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the workers, especially in the informal sector, into a deep crisis. A recent report “Workers in the Time of COVID-19" on informal workers says that more than 78% of workers have lost their livelihoods since the pandemic-induced lockdown. The survey by ActionAid India...

Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...

-The Indian Express Indian-American soil scientist Dr Rattan Lal said in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh soils are degraded and depleted because ‘organic matter' is quite below (.5-.2 per cent). In the past five decades, the state had achieved several firsts in the field of Agriculture and even became the first state in the country to install soil fertility map in each village to improve soil health. But the soil of Punjab...

-Hindustan Times Diesel-run generators used for irrigation not only burnt a hole in their pockets but were also an environmental concern Chandigarh: Solar-powered water pumps have come as a ray of hope for tribal farmers of the remote Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh that otherwise offers limited livelihood options due to the harsh climate and inhospitable terrain. The cultivated fields in the valley are situated along nullahs and the Spiti river and many...

-The Financial Express In part one of this article (Secondary Agriculture is of primary importance; August 10; https://bit.ly/31H0h0E), the need to expand the market range both horizontally (territorial extension) and vertically (functional expansion), as also the role of agro-processing in achieving the latter in particular, were discussed. In this part, the article dwells upon promoting secondary Agriculture on the shoulders of food and non-food processing. Current status of agro-processing The processing sector in...