-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...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Several organisations and individuals have sought higher Budget outlays for all departments dealing with the agriculture sector if the Centre is really serious about farmers’ welfare.   “Budget 2015-16 was a serious disappointment in that it actually cut down allocations for Ministry of Agriculture to levels less than 2011-12, i.e., five years earlier! (see table) …. It is clear that farmers’ welfare added to the Ministry’s...

-The Times of India PATIALA: The figure of Rs 70,000 crore cropped up frequently in 2015. This was the total amount that mutual fund firms invested in equity markets. This was also the amount that India offered to pay Russia to acquire anti-ballistic missile systems in what is considered the biggest defence deal between the two countries. Also, the Union finance minister proposed an increase in investment in infrastructure by Rs...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal/Sagar: When 39-year-old Ram Dwivedi shot himself with a rifle in Uttar Pradesh’s water-starved Banda district a few months ago, it came as a shock even to local residents in the drought-ravaged Bundelkhand region. In the past few years, most people who committed suicide in the area were either tenants or small-time farmers. But despite having 20 acres of land, Dwivedi couldn’t generate enough income to sustain his six-member family. Hit...