-The Indian Express Jhargram: Even as people return, a steady out-migration, especially of agricultural labour and farmers, continues from the region that has seen poor rain for years now. Taralata Mahato (25) draws awed whispers from women of Jhambeda village in West Midnapore’s Jhargram block as the only one from the village in the police. Taralata lives in a pucca two-storey house with whitewashed walls and a huge cowshed — a palatial home...

-Business Standard After a hotter than usual summer, a better monsoon would boost agriculture, rural demand Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan's hopes of a normal monsoon this year - after two back-to-back droughts - to boost rural demand could be fulfilled. Though the summer is expected to be hotter than usual, global and domestic forecasts point to good rains this year. Officials of both the weather department and private forecasters said the...

Amidst the prevailing gloominess over agrarian crisis, a recently released report says that the growth rate of agricultural output in both India and China were the same during 2008-2013. The agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of both these countries on an average grew at 3.3 percent per annum during that period. The latest available data from the 2016 Global Food Policy Report, however, indicates that the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka...

-Livemint.com Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology says there is a 54% probability that rainfall during the monsoon season this year will be 10 mm-per-day more than normal New Delhi: Weather scientists said they may have spotted signs of a normal, if not a good, rainy season this year, sparking hope among farmers and policymakers alike after two successive bad monsoons. With just three weeks to go for the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) much-awaited...

-The Hindu Stand-up India will help create 2.5 lakh entrepreneurs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday unveiled the ‘Stand-up India’ scheme to promote entrepreneurship among women, scheduled castes and tribes by enabling them secure easier loans and said this could be an engine of job creation for the youth. “Dalits and poor people, if given an opportunity, can bring in various reforms in the country. That’s my vision for Stand-up India…This scheme is...