-The Hindu Business Line Fears over shell companies inflating the GDP are overdone, but the CSO needs to be more transparent in its methods Just as the dust was settling on the controversy over the Centre deferring the release of NSSO’s labour force survey which showed unemployment numbers in an unflattering light, a new one has broken out on the veracity of the MCA-21 database used in GDP calculations. The economic commentariat...

-The Indian Express In the two-cornered contest in Rajasthan, voters, irrespective of whether their allegiance rests with the BJP or Congress, are critical of the decline in jobs. Ajmer, Jaipur, Rajsamand, Udaipur (Rajasthan): For about half an hour, starting 8 am, buses halt at Udaipur’s Syphon labour chowki to offload passengers huddled on their roofs. Hundreds of daily wage workers commute to the 10-odd labour chowkis in Udaipur city, from villages...

-Newsclick.in In an interview, the ‘father’ of India’s Green Revolution, says while technology is necessary, policies on procurement and public distribution are far more important in making agriculture economically viable and sustainable in the country. No one has played a more instrumental role in India’s self-sufficiency in food production than Dr MS Swaminathan — world-renowned agricultural scientist, known as the ‘Father of Green Revolution in India’. After getting a PhD from Cambridge...

-The Hindu Governments can provide direct cash transfers while creating conditions for employment With the Congress promising through the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) scheme ?6,000 every month to the poorest 20% of households if voted to power, Mahendra Dev and Pronab Sen talk of the importance and problems of direct cash transfers. Providing social protection is important even as governments try to create conditions for income-generating activities, they say in a discussion...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org Calculating water availability and crop budgeting can prevent over-extraction of groundwater and mounting farm debt. At 42 years, Bhagwat Ghagare seems young. But he is old enough to have seen his village prosper and decline many times. Farming had traditionally been small and distress migration rampant at Kumbharwadi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Between 1998 and 2002, a non-profit organisation, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), initiated a work related to rainwater harvesting...