-The Economic Times With a weak monsoon, farmers and farm labour, agri-investors and policy makers, everyone is looking up in the sky and praying for more water to pour. Farm analysts are debating whether this will lead to a drop of 16 million tonnes of foodgrain, as it happened in 2009, or 38 million tonnes, as it did in 2002. NCAER is projecting 20 million tonnes drop in grain production in...
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For real inclusion, agriculture and not just the economy must grow fast
-The Economic Times The latest consumption figures from the National Sample Survey Organisation show that rural consumption grew 18% in the two years to 2011-12. Poverty fell by roughly 7% in villages and 1% in towns. The town-country gap in incomes narrowed. This is welcome but needs to be qualified. 2009-10 was a drought year, depressing consumption and thereby exaggerating the improvement registered two years later. Over a longer seven-year period, between 2004-05...
More »The bottom line
-The Indian Express New NSS data affirms that GDP Growth remains the best way to tackle poverty Amid the pervasive economic gloom, provisional data from the 68th round of the National Sample Survey Office’s just-concluded household consumer expenditure survey offers a sliver of good news. According to it, average inflation-adjusted expenditure for July 2011-June 2012 rose by about 4.5 per cent in two years, with the poorest 10 per cent of the...
More »Fallacious perceptions of development–a tribal view from Jharkhand-Richard Toppo
-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...
More »Congress raises Rs 1,662 crore in 5 years, BJP Rs 852 crore-Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India India's GDP Growth rate may have dropped in the past few years but that has had little impact on the bottomlines of the country's leading political parties. The coffers of the main parties have been swelling, with the richest amongst them, the ruling Congress, having made a cool Rs 1,662 crore in the last five years till 2011-12 and the BJP in second place with Rs 852...
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