-Hindustan Times The government should pay 25% of wages of MGNREGA workers employed in individual farms and the poor should get an option to choose between money or subsidised food grains under the public distribution system (PDS). These are a few suggestions to be made by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog in the occasional paper that will be discussed with the states for framing a national policy to eliminate...

-The Indian Express Government must address the stress in the rural economy, seen in falling wages and incomes, which could reverse recent progress in rural areas Last year in February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had exhorted voters to vote for his party in the Delhi assembly election, claiming that his victory in the general election had brought luck to the country. Unfortunately, the voters of urban Delhi were not convinced and...

-Frontline Former psephologist Yogendra Yadav, now a member of the political collective Swaraj Abhiyan, recently toured India’s drought-affected districts. He called it a Samvedna Yatra. During the tour, he took note of the agony in rural areas affected by what he calls “one of the worst droughts in independent India” The drought, according to him, has left farmers and the larger rural community in extreme distress, leading to damaging changes in...

-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...

-Down to Earth Jharkhand taps its dam reservoirs and ponds to boost fish production as well as livelihood AFFLUENCE IS not a word one would normally associate with Jharkhand’s Jamukhadi village, which falls in one of India’s 250 most backward districts. But almost all the houses in the village have TV sets, computers and motorbikes. “There were only a few pucca (brick) houses in our village till 2000 when the state was...