-Livemint.com The average annual income of agricultural households was Rs 107,172, the National Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 shows New Delhi: Rural households have Access to banking and have savings but investment levels and pension and insurance coverage remain very low, a financial inclusion survey conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) showed. At the same time, levels of indebtedness were high and nearly equalled annual incomes, according to...

-TheStatesman.com Vijay Jardhari, who started the ‘Beej Bachao Andolan’ Uttarakhand in 1986 along with fellow farmers, has dedicated his life to conserving traditional seeds, which otherwise would have disappeared due to wide acceptability of hybrid seeds among farmers Dehradun: Flashback 1986: Whenever farmer and social activist Vijay Jardhari and his friends would visit any village telling locals to conserve their traditional seeds and to continue consuming millets, people would make fun of...

-IndiaSpend New Delhi: On July 27, 2018, Rajendra Birhor, a 40-year-old Adivasi, starved to death in Ramgarh, a district in eastern Jharkhand. He belonged to a “particularly vulnerable tribal group” (PVTG) and should have had Access to at least two welfare measures that could have saved his life: A pension and a ration card. Like him, 13 others died of starvation in Jharkhand over the last 10 months, according to the latest...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Raising farm income could well be the agenda for 2019 general elections and well aware of this is the Narendra Modi government, which is leaving no stone unturned to lure this vote bank. Navigating this agenda for the government is Radha Mohan Singh, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. Aware of the challenges of the price sensitive market, Singh said, “agriculture markets cannot be...

-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...