-Livemint.com The discourse in the state treats all farmers—small, medium, big, irrigated and rain-fed—as a homogeneous entity, ignoring differences in the severity of their problems Sharad Pawar breached an unwritten rule of Maharashtra politics. Recently, he spoke about the woes of small farmers, albeit those in the irrigated belt. He regretted that a sugarcane farmer of barely two acres of land is often viewed as a rich farmer and that too, rather...

-The Hindu Paddy stubble, unlike wheat residue, isn’t valuable animal feed. Incentivising biomass-based power plants in Punjab and Haryana will help north India breathe easier. Delhi has registered its worst air quality in recent times. This has prompted Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to call it a “gas chamber”. Pollution in different parts of the capital has touched hazardous levels with potentially serious health effects on the rich and poor alike, especially on...

-TheWire.in Nitin Sethi responds to the rural development ministry’s defence to reports that it used a WhatsApp group to tell states to stop creating MGNREGA work. Ministry of rural development (MORD) clarifies: The reports are not a summary of the reality. It has questioned the intent of the government on the basis of an informal communication of a joint secretary of the department. The informal communication of a joint secretary does not...

-The Indian Express Agriculture’s contribution to poverty reduction is five times more than that of metropolitan centres Speaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading. A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over...

-The Hindu Economic growth alone is not enough to achieve key Sustainable Development Goals. It must translate into jobs for the poor and marginalised India is the fastest growing large economy in the world today. Despite this, one in every five Indians is poor. Multilateral agencies as well as governments are playing an active role in understanding problems relating to poverty and hunger and finding solutions to them. But these challenges are...