-PTI Pilot also made several other announcements including those for opening 50 retail outlets for the sale of bio-diesel and building several roads in the state. JAIPUR: Rajasthan has generated the largest number of man days, totalling 30.03 crore, of paid employment under the MGNREGA scheme among all states in the country, said Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot. Pilot made this revelation in the state assembly late Thursday night while replying to a...

-The Hindu Two-wheelers continue to slide as virus adds to woes In a sign of reviving Rural demand, tractor players M&M and Escorts posted a double-digit growth in sales in February 2020. M&M’s farm equipment sector (FES) said its domestic sales in February 2020 stood at 21,877 units, up 21% from the year-ago month. Exports, though, dropped 22% to 683 units, taking total tractor sales during the month to 22,561 units. This is a...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Union Budget of 2020 is conspicuous by its non-recognition of the ongoing and widely discussed slowdown of the economy, let alone its impact on the different sections of the people. Given the negative growth in employment and consumption in the rural economy, the budget seems like a cruel joke on the plight of the poor, in general, and women, in particular. Instead of measures for boosting...

-Frontline.in The Budget lacks any serious effort to address the main issues of unemployment, agrarian distress and falling incomes, revealing a high level of official insensitivity. A Budget during a time of recession, increasing unemployment, agrarian distress, falling incomes, demand constraint and malnutrition would have done well to first acknowledge the mess that policies have created and then taken steps to provide employment, boost rural incomes, increase purchasing power and thereby demand. Coming...

-India Water Portal How can India change the game on groundwater management to deal with its overexploited aquifers?. After independence, India was largely food insecure but post Green Revolution around the 1970s, foodgrain production increased manifold consequently reducing food insecurity and poverty in the country, in spite of rapid population growth. Its ability to achieve targeted results was largely dependent on the explosion of groundwater abstraction mechanisms like tubewells. Groundwater development continued...