-Down to Earth Ensuring that pulses sell at the minimum support price and distributing them under the public distribution system can help them find favour with farmers again When India went into its first lockdown in 2020, the government announced Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), under which over 800 million people were to be provided rice, wheat, and pulses, in addition to the ration provided under the public distribution system...

-TheWire.in Narendra Modi has taken a well-functioning but underfunded scheme and added his 'branding' to it. The least he could have done is allocated the kind of money the programme badly needs. On September 29, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the ‘National Scheme for PM Poshan’ in schools, details of which have been put out in a press release. While full scheme details are not yet available, this news...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

Generally, economists refer to indicators like Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR) in order to assess the extent of joblessness and work related precarity at a particular period of time in a certain geographical area. However, there are other indicators too, which can help in understanding the job situation, livelihoods security and vulnerability of workers in a better way such as 'percentage distribution...

-The Hindu It is required to document both the disadvantages and privileges of various communities in India At the recently concluded Parliament session, there was a demand to lift the 50% cap on reservation imposed by the Supreme Court through the legislative route. With the 2021 Census coming up, several political parties have demanded a nation-wide caste census. They argue that a Socio-Economic Caste Census is the only way to make a...