-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...

-Newsclick.in By all accepted standards, the official minimum wages in states are just enough to keep the worker alive. What they actually get is even less. Minimum wages of industrial workers in India are less than half of what a justifiable calculation – based on minimum calorific intake and the barest minimum of other expenses – suggests. While the central govt. using a well-accepted standard formula provides Rs.18,000 per month to its...

-PTI The retail inflation based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 4.87 per cent in May. It was 1.46 per cent in June 2017. Retail inflation rose to 5 per cent in June, a five-month high despite easing food prices, government data showed on Thursday. The retail inflation based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 4.87 per cent in May. It was 1.46 per cent in June 2017. The earlier high was in January...

-The Hindu Ramanagaram (Karnataka): Now it is the turn of mango farmers to dump their produce on the roadside. Mango may be the king of fruits, but its growers are not the kings, at least in the State’s major mango-growing belt of Ramanagaram district as glut in production has resulted in a crash in wholesale prices of the fruit. Such is the depth to which wholesale prices have plummeted that the elite...

-Livemint.com Farmer unions are divided over whether to inconvenience cities with their protests, and as a result the strikes have been limited to a few regions in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra New Delhi: The ongoing protests by farmers attempting to restrict the supply of milk and fresh produce to cities has highlighted differences between farmer unions on modes of protest, especially on the question of whether to risk rattling urban...