Almost one in every five suicides in the world is committed by self-poisoning with pesticide, which mostly occur in rural, agricultural areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), states a new publication entitled 'Preventing Suicide: A resource for pesticide registrars and regulators'. Published jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the booklet says that the adoption of green revolution technology...

-The Telegraph More than half of the country's small and marginal farmers continue to be left out of the ambit of formal finance A recent report by the Reserve Bank of India found that despite a plethora of schemes aimed at financial inclusion, only 40.9 per cent of small and marginal farmers have so far been covered by the banking system. Small and marginal farmers are defined as those with operational land...

-Livemint.com Public programs like MGNREGA are less successful in raising wages in regions characterized by historical inequality, finds new study When it was launched in 2006, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was envisaged to boost rural economies by providing the rural poor with 100 days of guaranteed public employment and raising rural wages. But its intended benefits may have eluded those who needed them the most, a new...

-The Hindu Business Line Low food inflation and high services inflation in Rural India is doing more bad than good for the rural population CPI Inflation in August came in at benign 3.21 per cent, although it recorded a marginal uptick from July. A deeper look at the numbers brings out the widening disparity between the urban and rural inflation. Rural inflation in August was almost half of urban retail inflation. With...

-The Indian Express Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Telangana are the top three states, having disbursed the third instalment to almost 16.35 lakh, 13.99 lakh and 11.03 lakh farmers, respectively. Uttar Pradesh, which accounts for one out of every four farmers in the country, has not yet paid the third instalment under PM-KISAN (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi) to a single farmer, according to the last update Monday night on the scheme’s...