-Frontline.in The Oxfam India report on employment says jobs remain a huge challenge in India where half of the workforce depends on agriculturefor livelihood. Employment, or the lack of it, has emerged as one of the most contentious issues in the general election this year. Most surveys show that the single biggest concern preoccupying the electorate, especially the youth, is unemployment. The very fact that the government introduced a quota for the...

-TheWire.in A look at how the country’s political heavyweights deal with environmental issues and livelihoods in their poll manifestos Twin crises beset India today: serious unemployment and the loss of livelihoods, along with the collapse of the ecological basis on which we all survive. Any political party that does not deal with these is not serious about the country’s future. So how well do the country’s political heavyweights, the Congress and the BJP,...

-The Telegraph Some clauses of the draft of the Indian Forest Act 2019 are extraordinarily undemocratic Forests are considered planetary resources of great importance: as carbon sinks, as repositories for biodiversity, as effective tools for local climate control, and as a source of timber and related produce. Forests have been dwelling places for people, too. It is important from the point of view of sustainable development that forests be preserved and biodiversity...

-Newsclick.in In an interview, the ‘father’ of India’s Green Revolution, says while technology is necessary, policies on procurement and public distribution are far more important in making agriculture economically viable and sustainable in the country. No one has played a more instrumental role in India’s self-sufficiency in food production than Dr MS Swaminathan — world-renowned agricultural scientist, known as the ‘Father of Green Revolution in India’. After getting a PhD from Cambridge...

-Newsclick.in The scheme, which is similar to MGNREGS, is an employment-of-last-resort programme in order to provide minimum Livelihood security to the poorest of the poor in the urban areas in absence of enough employment opportunity in the economy. In the midst of increasing unemployment in the country, along with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for the rural poor, the state government of Kerala has an interesting employment-of-last-resort programme for...