In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...
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UP Assembly Elections 2022: Impact of farmers’ protest likely; MSP, cane dues major issues in Jat belt -Shagun
-Down to Earth Western UP farmers say they have become aware of their rights due to the protest and will vote on them The year-long farmers’ protest against the three farm laws and on granting a legal status to minimum support price (MSP) is likely to play a role when farmers from western Uttar Pradesh (UP) cast their votes February 10, 2022. The 2020-21 protest and several mahapanchayats during that time saw a...
More »Gramin Agricultural Markets: Two years on, just 6% haats upgraded -Shagun Kapil
-Down to Earth The Centre had announced a scheme in the 2018-19 budget to upgrade rural haats so that small farmers could get fair prices for their produce It has been two years since an ambitious programme to convert 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) was launched. But only 1,251 have come up till now. This is barely six per cent of the target. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told...
More »Are we witnessing depeasantisation in Indian agriculture?
The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...
More »Migrant workers bore the brunt of 2020 lockdown due their poor access to social security schemes & legal rights, depicts latest NHRC report
The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...
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