-The Tribune Agrarian society vs a non-agrarian economy poses a huge political challenge. JUST how many farmers are there in India? This is not merely a statistical question. This is a question of policy and political significance. We have all grown up reading about India as an agrarian economy, with a majority of its population engaged in farming. Does that continue to be the case? Or has the number of farmers declined...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Labour ministry’s quarterly employment survey (QES), which provides for the number of jobs created in eight sectors that account for over 80% of the country’s total organised workforce, has been put on the backburner owing to the more recent payroll data which has projected much higher number of jobs created in the organised sector than the labour bureau survey shows. According to the government’s first-ever estimate of...

-Firstpost.com The labour ministry has put the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) on the back burner as it wants to transition to computing payroll data based on Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) subscriptions, based on data from the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), according to this report in The Economic Times. Of course, the EPFO-based jobs data gives one a better picture about the...

-The Indian Express While they were given compensation of Rs 1 crore and a government job, families say the root causes of farmers' problems are yet to be addressed and that they were yet to get justice. Mandsaur (M.P.): A year after six farmers were killed in Mandsaur during an agitation for better prices, their families are still angry and most plan to attend Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s rally on Wednesday. While...

-Livemint.com While there are several creditable achievements, it is the deeper structural reforms where expectations from a strong government have not been met Amidst expectations of a magical transformation of the Indian economy, the Narendra Modi government took over the reins in May 2014. During the election campaign, people were led to believe that the Gujarat model of agricultural development, which delivered 8% growth in agriculture during fiscal years 2003-14, would be...