-Frontline The problem in rural India is not one of too much credit to poor households that leads to debt waivers that damage bank balance sheets, but one of inadequate access to credit from formal sources. IF Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is to be believed, efforts to help Indian farmers by providing them with cheap(er) credit and relieving them of an unsustainable debt burden only harms them in the...

-The Indian Express The Ministry of Rural Development seems undecided on whether to blame former Minister Nitin Gadkari or the media for some of the problems with the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). An internal note of the Ministry - prepared ahead of a Performance Review Committee meeting this month - blamed Gadkari for contributing to delays in the payment of wages under the scheme. Soon after...

-The Indian Express Rural wages in India have registered an average annual growth of 3.8 per cent in November, the lowest since July 2005, according to Labour Bureau data. The 3.8 per cent year-on-year increase is a significant drop relative to the two-digit growth rates prevailing until June, and the peak 20 per cent-plus levels of 2011 (see graph). "The numbers confirm the findings in our mid-year economic analysis that inflation is...

-The Hindu Economic diversification in rural India, involving the emergence and growth of non-agricultural activities, is considered an important means of increasing employment and per capita incomes, and improving standards of living. However, non-agricultural activities themselves are of various kinds differing in terms of productivity and the returns they yield. So while the development of some activities may point to rural dynamism, many others exist and grow because of the distress-driven...

-The Hindu Business Line   Departments, Ministries asked to fast-track the scheme New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for integration of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) with the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. This will help in creating more irrigation assets, he said. A day after clearing changes in the Land Acquisition Act, Modi chaired a high-level meeting on Tuesday on the irrigation scheme and asked the Departments...