-PTI India’s monsoon, vital for Asia’s third-largest economy, has been 22% deficient till June 26, official data showed, adding to the government’s worries and prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to consult key aides on measures to tone up the economy on Wednesday. In a revised forecast, the Met department predicted the rains would be 96% of the long-term average, lower than its April forecast of 99%. Rainfall is considered normal if...
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Sowing gathers pace in Andhra Pradesh on good rainfall-Jayashree Bhosale
-The Economic Times Sowing has picked up in Andhra Pradesh following good rains in the last two days. But farmers in Maharashtra are worried with the scarce reservoir water being kept aside for drinking purpose. "Only 8% sowing has been completed till now. Crops of moong and urad have been affected the most. Standing crops are also getting affected due to water shortage as groundwater has gone down and there is no...
More »Four National Advisory Council members dropped from panel-Nitin Sethi
-The Times of India The UPA is likely to rejig the Sonia Gandh-led National Advisory Council(NAC) with four members of the government think-tank for social sector reforms — Jean Dreze, M S Swaminathan, Harsh Mander and Madhav Gadgil — being dropped at the end of their second year tenure. Dreze, an economist and one of the most prominent faces of the NAC, who had strongly advocated for a universal food security, had...
More »NREGA's non-existent impact on migrant labourers-Rukmini Shrinivasan
PATIALA/SANGRUR: Everyone agrees that theNREGA is causing a shortage of agricultural labour. Everyone, that is, except the workers themselves. For the last two years, the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (commonly referred to as NREGA) in reducing the number of men migrating out of India's poorest states has become something of a truism. In Punjab, this has resulted in dozens of news articles about the shortage...
More »Despite Drop from 2009 Peak, Agricultural Land Grabs Still Remain Above Pre-2005 Levels
-World Watch Institute An estimated 70.2 million hectares of agricultural land worldwide have been sold or leased to private and public investors since 2000, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) for its Vital Signs Online service. The bulk of these acquisitions, which are called “land grabs” by some observers, took place between 2008 and 2010, peaking in 2009. Although data for 2010 indicate that the amount of...
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