The total number of farm suicides in the country has reduced from 12,602 to 11,370 between 2015 and 2016 viz. a fall by 9.8 percent. This has been revealed recently in a reply by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Parshottam Rupala in the Lok Sabha. So, one may wonder why there is such a hue and cry about rural distress and agrarian crisis...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Food for thought: do Attappady community kitchens serve the needy? -KA Shaji
-The Hindu Amid criticism from SC/ST panel, experts say project must continue Now in her late twenties, Veeramma Selvan of Thekkekadampara tribal hamlet in Sholayur gram panchayat of Attappady has reasons to believe that her gods have stopped smiling. It was in January last year that she lost her five-month-old, underweight son Balu — her fourth child — allegedly due to milk aspiration. (a medical condition in which the mother's milk goes...
More »The Curious Case of MGNREGA wages -Harsha Pareek
-Hindkisan.com Alarmingly, despite wages paid under MGNREGA being much lower than the standard minimum wage in most states, increasing number of people from rural households are applying for jobs under the employment scheme. This trend is an indicator of the mounting distress in the rural economy which is aggravated by paucity of jobs. Mocking the economic condition of the distressed rural working community, the Union Government has decided to uphold the low...
More »Construction sector jobs have let down peasants -Roshan Kishore
-Hindustan Times An examination of RBI data indicates that peasants turning to construction are increasingly at the same income levels as farming, in probably more challenging conditions. Shifting agricultural workers to remunerative non-farm jobs, is India’s central challenge on the employment front. The construction sector has been a mainstay of non-farm jobs over the last two decades. However, these jobs are increasingly losing their remunerative potential. The KLEM (Capital with a K, Labour,...
More »No hike in MGNREGA wages in 10 states -Shalini Nair
-The Indian Express In the worst wage revision in the history of the rural employment guarantee scheme, that started in 2006, MGNREGA workers in 10 states will get no hike in their wages for FY 2018-19, according to the revised wage rates issued by the Union government. In the worst wage revision in the history of the rural employment guarantee scheme, that started in 2006, MGNREGA workers in 10 states will get...
More »