-The Hindu Business Line Falling farm prices, drying up of industrial jobs and lesser MGNREGA work have sharpened rural discontent. The Budget cannot ignore these factors in a year of 8 State polls The year 2017 was roiled by rural discontent. After two consecutive drought years (2014-15 and 2015-16), when agriculture growth plummeted (see table), the countryside was awash with hope after a good monsoon in 2016-17. However, record foodgrain output (272 million...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A central scheme for skill training and jobs for rural youths has been witnessing below-target placement levels for the past five years, with the government's failure to answer key questions suggesting it is not monitoring the programme closely. Most of the training under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana is provided by NGOs - who are paid for it - and a few state government institutes. Their...

-The Telegraph Bhopal: The turbaned, white-haired, kurta-dhoti-wearing "Tauji" figures are there too, but one outstanding feature of the current farmer agitation in Madhya Pradesh are its jeans-clad, smartphone-wielding spearheads. If the veteran "Kakkaji" Shiv Kumar Sharma is the public face of the movement, which lacks a central leadership, much of the spadework is being done by a band of young, bilingual, stats-savvy and largely apolitical agriculture graduates. Their leader Kedar Sirohi, who is...

-TheWire.in Pfutsero resident Neingupe Marhu uses his minivan to pick up garbage the local administration has failed to clear. New Delhi: Many may not have heard of picturesque Pfutsero in Nagaland’s Phek district, the highest and the coldest point of the state at 2,133 metres above sea level. But one Pfutsero resident is presenting a small but vital example of how individual effort can help keep civic facilities running even when the state...

-Scroll.in / IndiaSpend.com Falling global demand, environmental regulations and contemporary cow politics have choked the leather economy of Uttar Pradesh's largest industrial city. Shadab Hussain, 23, dropped out of school at age 11 to work in a leather factory in Kanpur, the oldest and largest industrial city of India’s most populous state. To support his family, parents and four siblings, he worked eight-hour shifts every day for a Monthly Salary of Rs...