The Indian Electricity Act, 2003, initially envisaged that the appropriate governments shall endeavour to supply electricity to all areas including villages and hamlets (Section 6), thus placing the responsibility for ensuring rural electricity supply on state governments. The UPA-I government amended this section to read as follows after detailed deliberations internally and with opposition parties: the concerned state government and the central government shall jointly endeavour to provide access to...

The glitter of growth has added little sparkle to the lives of many peasants and rural workers. Deprivation, discrimination, and disadvantage dominate the everyday lives of large sections in rural Andhra Pradesh, an important new study*finds.  Village studies highlight features of society that are often overlooked and overshadowed by macro-studies of the economy. A recent study presents extraordinarily rich, unusually detailed and intensely disturbing data on agrarian relations, livelihoods, economic...

In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive...

Planning Commission Member, Professor Abhijit Sen, has observed that bad management of food grains and a high economic growth rate, particularly in the non-agricultural sectors, had led to spiralling prices of food grains. Prof. Sen was delivering the Prof. L S. Venkataramanan Memorial Lecture on ‘Inclusive Growth', at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, here on Thursday. Prof. Sen said the economic growth rate of 9 per cent led to increased...

After sitting on the proposal for four years, the Planning Commission has approved the union agriculture ministry’s modified national agricultural insurance scheme. More than half a dozen different models of farm insurance have been tried out since the early 1970s but without much success. None of these schemes has been economically viable. We now have one more experiment being launched. No more than a fraction of the country’s over 120...