-PTI   Kerala-based, all-women micro-lender Kudumbashree will soon sign a pact for providing consultancy services to the National Rural Livelihood Mission with the objective of scaling up this flagship programme of the Rural Development Ministry. Under the soon-to-be-inked agreement with the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), a flagship programme of the Rural Development Ministry, Kudumbashree will offer its micro-enterprise consultancy services to the mission. "Kudumbashree will soon be signing a Memorandum of Understanding with...

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...

Degraded soils, depleting groundwater, and chemical pesticides are playing havoc, placing agriculture in terrible distress. I haven’t forgotten that night. Sitting with a group of farmers in a village in Ludhiana district in Punjab, at the height of the Green Revolution, a farmer showed me a bag of fertiliser that he brought from the market. “Why are you showing me this bag”, I asked. “Wait”, he said, and began to open the...

-DNA   The Centre's debt relief scheme for the farmers has given anything but relief to the poor farmers. Despite the Rs 65,318.33-crore Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (ADWDRS) launched by the UPA with much fanfare in 2008, nearly 43.42 million (48.6 per cent) of the 89.35 million farmer households are still in debt. This is the finding of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report on 'Indebtedness of Farmers Household'. The scheme benefited...

In an attempt to bolster its aam aadmi image, the government is setting up the Aajeevika Development and Financial Corporation, a financial institution to ensure easily available funding for self-help groups under the National Rural Livelihood Mission. Problems in accessing credit for families below poverty line have been a major hurdle for the livelihood mission. The rural development ministry is in the process of inter-ministerial consultations on the proposed financial...