-TheHansIndia.com The ongoing drought is fuelling distress migration from districts in Telangana, a trend that was witnessed in the early 2000s. The severe drought conditions for the second consecutive year have led to crop failure, mounting debts, chronic unemployment and failure of the NREGA scheme, especially in the districts of Mahbubnagar, Medak, and Adilabad, forcing large-scale exodus of farmers and others.   The fruits of a people’s movement and the world’s largest anti-poverty...

-The Hindu Jan Breman takes a long view of the changes he’s seen in India over half a century. Perhaps no other scholar in the social sciences has studied India’s poor and its informal economy as intensively as Jan Breman. The sheer temporal span of his research is mind-boggling. He began his study in south Gujarat 15 years after India’s Independence — in 1962. And he was in south Gujarat in...

-TheHansIndia.com Agriculture is intertwined with soil, plant and human beings. In shaping the research, how much attention was paid to these three components? There is a need to reassess or evaluate the institute, whether it has retained the virtues of the pioneers who started it Improvements in farming could be traced in certain regions of the world, where agriculture has become prime occupation of life. Hence, the struggle and labours of few...

-Down to Earth The rural development ministry had recently demanded an additional allocation of Rs 5,000 crore to maintain the momentum of MGNREGA Civil society has supported the demand made by the Union Ministry of Rural Development to the Ministry of Finance to provide Rs 5,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MGNREGS). Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the United Progressive Alliance’s employment generation flagship scheme,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Nearly 18 million villagers registered under the rural job scheme face the prospect of toiling without wages as funds have dried up amid a drought-triggered surge in demand for work. Twelve states have run up "negative balances", meaning workers' payments are due, while the rest have exhausted 95 per cent of the funds released to them so far, according to the rural development ministry, which runs the Mahatma...