-Livemint.com The richest household’s assets are worth much more than that of all the others combined and the same conclusion holds if we take the distribution of rural assets We all know that Credit Suisse reckons that the richest 1% of Indians own 58.4% of the nation’s wealth, up from 36.8% in 2000. What is perhaps not so well-known is that, according to the Credit Suisse report, the bottom 70% of Indians...

-Livemint.com In the last decade, the rural constituent has emerged an important factor for overall private final consumption, which forms more than half (55-60% range) of India’s demand side GDP An above-average monsoon is commonly expected to be a key demand driver in 2016-17. Gross domestic product (GDP) forecasts for the year incorporate a revival in rural consumption—a segment that suffered severe setback from two successive years of adverse rainfall. In...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-The Hindu Business Line Higher social sector spending by the government boosts income and consumption, and spurs growth India’s economic growth is now much more closely linked to the state of the rural economy than it ever was. Sustaining a 7.5-per cent growth in GDP would be contingent on higher growth in rural household consumption. Rural expenditure grew 5.7 per cent annually during 2005-15 — against 5 per cent annual growth in the...

-Livemint.com Quality employment eludes majority of India’s university educated Last year, 2.3 million people, including postgraduates and PhDs, applied for 368 peon posts advertised in Uttar Pradesh. Outrage followed. Why were highly educated people applying for a job which required only primary school education and knowing how to ride a bicycle, people asked. To answer, one needs to find out the jobs people who have been through a university end up in. According...