People's Archive of Rural India Marudupudi Nagaraju has a three-acre mango orchard in Pomula Bheemavaram village in Andhra Pradesh. A daily wage worker of the Madiga community, this land was assigned to him around 25 years ago by the state government. It was done in a move by the state to redistribute land among the landless classes introduced under the Andhra Pradesh Land Reforms (Ceiling on AgriculTural Holdings) Act, 1973. hen...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Poverty and inequality
KEY TRENDS • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...
More »‘I hope we don’t die of hunger’: Rural women struggle as Maharashtra ends subsidised grains plan - Prateek Goyal
Newslaundry In 2018, when Rekha Waghmare was 39 years old, her husband died by suicide. Namdev, 42, was among over 12,000 farmers who died by suicide in Maharashtra from 2015 to 2018, struggling with five years of crop failure. He left behind Rekha, their two children, a 3.5 acre farm, and an unpaid loan of Rs 4 lakh. Rekha, who lives in Nandusa village in Hingoli district, Turned to farming and daily...
More »Real Wages Declined for Rural Indians in 2022, a Year When the Economy Somewhat Recovered
The year 2022 was supposed to mark the recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns of the preceding two years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February pushed up prices of food, fuel and fertilizer worldwide. In India consumer price inflation, which had declined to under 5 percent in the September-November period of 2021, has steadily increased, staying above 6 percent throughout 2022. What happened to rural incomes in 2022? An...
More »How will Indian Cities Fare if a Turkey-like Earthquake Strikes the Subcontinent?
On 6 February, 2023 Southern Turkey and the adjoining areas in Syria were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by several aftershocks. The tremors have flattened buildings and destroyed roads and other infrastrucTure. At least 35,000 casualties (UPDATE) have occurred across Turkey and Syria, with the vast majority being in the former nation. A news report cited the Turkish environment minister saying that 24,921 buildings across the region had collapsed. What...
More »