-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,...

-The Hindu More Agricultural Workers committed suicide in 2016, but the overall number of suicides in the farm sector dipped almost 10% in comparison with the previous year, according to provisional data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) that the Agriculture Ministry shared with Parliament on Tuesday. Overall, 11,370 people in the farming sector committed suicide in 2016, in comparison to 12,602 the previous year. From 2014, the NCRB has been dividing...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The national rural job scheme is set to witness the lowest wage revision since the project was launched. The Union finance ministry is learnt to have rejected a proposal to change the formula for revising the wage rate for 2018-19 under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for 2018-19. The rates in 10 states, including Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, are expected to remain unchanged,...

-Newsclick.in Despite the state being largely rural, the contribution of agriculture in the state’s gross domestic product is reducing considerably. The state of Himachal Pradesh has a predominantly rural population. Ninety per cent of the people here live in villages. There are 17,882 villages and about 59 urban settlements including two municipal corporations. There are more than 14.9 lakh families in the state. The total number of workers according to the census...

-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...