-The Indian Express With the scheme floundering, the Centre is now planning to shift focus to district-level schemes to yield better results in the short-term for its skilling initiative. The government’s flagship skilling scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), is struggling to achieve end-results. Data for the PMKVY scheme until the first week of July 2017 reveals that out of a total 30.67 lakh candidates who had been trained or...

-TheWire.in There a growing chasm between corporate India’s hiring strategy and the aspirations of India’s young workers. The new skill development minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, has a strong track record in digital schemes to deliver subsidised gas to needy households. But he is in for a challenge in the vocational training sector, less amenable to scale economies, woefully dependent on private industry and saddled with the burden of expectations set, first by the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Seeking to protect farmers from price volatility by ensuring guaranteed price for their produce, the Centre will come out with a draft model law on contract farming this month. Once it is made public, stakeholders including farmers will be given 30 days to comment and give suggestions. A final 'model' contract farming Act is expected to be released in November after incorporating the suggestions. "The final model...

-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old Christian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...

-The Economic Times Data suggests that India's unemployed youngsters are not looking for jobs. In January 2017, there were 408.4 million employed people in the country. The number of those who were unemployed and seeking jobs was 25.9 million. Seven months later, by the end of July, the number of employed fell to 405.4 million. But the number of those looking for jobs also fell to 13.7 million, according to a report...