While the revolutionary National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has brought higher wages for labourers across the country, farmers and landlords in Tamil Nadu have begun to feel the pinch following its huge success. They don't get labourers to work in their fields due to low wages. Will the new choice force landlords to hike wages? Rural Tamil Nadu is witnessing a critical migration of labour. Farm workers, 80% of who...

Stability in markets will be determined by size of next year's crop The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned about a further increase in global food prices in 2011 if there is no significant increase in production of major food crops. In the latest edition of its “Food Outlook” report, the agency observed that the rise in global prices, all of which was accruing in the second half of 2010, owing...

The recently published survey of employment and unemployment in India, conducted in 300 districts across the country, shows once again that without a reform of India’s archaic labour laws, the share of salaried employed will continue to remain low. The employment-unemployment survey was conducted by the Labour Bureau of the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment. Public attention has largely focused on the unemployment number that the survey threw up....

Some people feel agriculture in India provides employment much beyond its capacity — that is, the number of people working on the farm is many times the actual requirement. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among the proponents of this view. In his interaction with a group of editors last month, Singh said, “The only way we can raise our heads above poverty is for more people to be taken out of...

West Bengal's farmers switched to new scientific material called 'Poly Mulching' (made out of plastic) to protect crops. The North Bengal region has got some highly fertile agricultural land. But weeds, lack of proper sunlight, heavy downpour, soil erosion, seed germination and cold weather conditions often result in harming the crops and ultimately curtailing agricultural production. However, to protect crops from such problems, farmers have now found a suitable way by using...