-Down to Earth Gourd has sculpted the culture and traditions of Rural India for ages A mellifluous tune breaks the silence as I trudge through a forested hill in the Baiga heartland of Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh. At places the music fuses with the gurgling sound of Burner, a tributary of the Narmada river, and becomes even more enchanting. Entranced, I start following the melody and reach a hut where...

-The Indian Express Agrarian crisis is an opportunity, for the government that assumes office after elections, to enact a law giving farmers the right to sell any quantity of their produce to anybody, anywhere and at any time. The German obsession with sound currency has been conditioned by the collective memory of the Great Hyperinflation of 1922-23, just as American intolerance to double-digit unemployment and stock market crashes is traceable to...

Recent studies and media reports have confirmed that Indian farmers are facing non-remunerative and sometimes falling prices. A past news alert by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicated deflation in wholesale prices of 8 kharif crops (viz. maize, arhar, moong, urad, groundnut, soybean, sunflower seed and Niger seed) on average between 2016-17 and 2018-19. Based on data analysis, that news alert also demonstrated how the rural areas have witnessed...

-Firstpost.com Sangrur (Punjab): It is difficult to imagine Jasmine Khan’s pain and agony at losing her 14-month-old son in 2016. Living in a two-room concrete house in a labyrinth of bylanes in Handiaya village of Barnala district in Sangrur Lok Sabha constituency, she wells up every time Bilal intrudes on her thoughts, no matter that it has been two years since he succumbed to blood cancer. She often tries to hide...

-The Indian Express The last five years, in other words, have seen a slowdown in rural wages even after adjusting for inflation, which has been far lower than during the UPA regime. Rural wages have grown 3.8 per cent year-on-year in December, the lowest ever for this month. Together with depressed farm prices — annual wholesale inflation in December was minus 0.07 per cent for “food” and 4.45 per cent for...