-PTI Inflation in 'fuel and power' basket in September was 16.65 per cent Inflation based on wholesale prices rose to a two-month high of 5.13 per cent in September, mainly due to hardening of food prices and rise in cost of petrol and diesel. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation stood at 4.53 per cent in August and 3.14 per cent in September last year. According to the government data released Monday, food...

-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...

-Newsclick.in By all accepted standards, the official minimum wages in states are just enough to keep the worker alive. What they actually get is even less. Minimum wages of industrial workers in India are less than half of what a justifiable calculation – based on minimum calorific intake and the barest minimum of other expenses – suggests. While the central govt. using a well-accepted standard formula provides Rs.18,000 per month to its...

-Firstpost.com The recent increases in minimum support prices have attracted two criticisms from two opposite sides. One is that this is less than what farmers deserve, the second is that this is populist and ignores larger macro side effects. The increase in fair remunerative price for sugarcane has also been criticised for not adequately addressing the woes of the sugar sector. Ramesh Chand, member, agriculture, NITI Aayog talks to Firstpost on...

-The Indian Express After the market rates crashed to Rs 1-2 per kg, only 565 tomato growers across Haryana received the average price difference payment of Rs 2,136. Kurukshatra: Jasbir Saini shows a message on his iBall mobile phone displaying an amount of Rs 296 credited to his bank account. That’s what the 47-year-old has received as “differential price” on the distress sale of his tomato crop under the Haryana government’s Bhavantar...