-The Economic Times NUH/ ALWAR/ JAIPUR: Thirty-five year old Munna is sipping his midmorning cup of tea with his uncle Ali Mohammed at Sharma dhaba. This resident of Doha village in Nuh district of Haryana has just wrapped up the day at Jaipur’s weekly Hatwara pashu mela (cattle fair) buying 10 buffaloes for himself. He has reason to be vigilant as he prepares for the evening journey across the border. “We have...

-Livemint.com After being on the sidelines of Dalit and feminist movements for long, Dalit women are now standing up for their rights New Delhi: In 2008, seven women, aged 19-24, walked into a police station in Haryana’s Indri village in Kurukshetra district. Dressed in salwar-kameez with dupattas draped around their necks, they looked tired but confident, angry and brimming with questions. They wanted to meet the SHO and ask why no FIR...

-Financial Express For sustainable growth, Rural India’s squeezing purchasing power needs immediate attention New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) unanimous call for a 25-basis-point rate hike after four years was primarily driven by the strengthening core inflation as well as the rising household inflationary expectations. Since the April Monetary Policy Committee meeting, there have been some significant macro developments, mainly on four counts. First, the global crude oil prices have risen...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...

-Hindustan Times Unless the deficit is addressed, plans to improve incomes in the farm sector are unlikely to succeed According to the 2011 census, 45% of India’s workforce is engaged in non-agricultural activities i.e. professions other than cultivation and agricultural labour. This number diminishes by slightly more than two percentage points if one excludes two other primary sector activities: mining and plantations, forestry and fishing. Who are these workers? Which industries and...