-The Telegraph New Delhi: Sangh parivar affiliates Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh have urged the government to address joblessness and agrarian distress in the budget, sounding an alert before the 2019 general election campaign. The Manch, the Sangh's economic wing, has suggested the government shift focus and provide incentives to indigenous small-scale industries to generate more jobs. Farmer arm Bharatiya Kisan Sangh has advocated measures to make agricultural remunerative and demanded...

-TimesNowNews.com New Delhi: The total fertility rate among women- which indicates the total number of childer born to a woman during her lifetime- (15-49) has dipped below replacement other than Hindus and Muslims- it has emerged. The fertility rate of Hindu households is 2.1 declining from 2.8 in the last survey in 2004-05, a level at which a population is said to be able to replace itself from generation to generation without...

-The Asian Age The increase in the income has also halted MIgration of local people to other states in search of work. Bhubaneswar: Grappling with financial problems because of non-remunerative character of their age-old agricultural practices, villagers living in hilly areas of Odisha’s Gajapati district have suddenly found enough money coming to their pockets by adoption of traditional methods of irrigation. Sourcing water in the Diversion Based Irrigation (DBI) system from the streams...

-Livemint.com The tribal belt of south Bengal has become ground zero of a grim battle with an ever-increasing population of visiting elephants The elephants are here,” Jiten Singh declares without any show of emotion as we arrive at Tapoban (Madhyapara) village. About 65km from Kharagpur town, Tapoban is a tribal hamlet deep within the vast forested terrain known as Jangalmahal, in West Bengal. It is nearing dusk. Ordinarily, the village would be...

-The Financial Express Not very long ago—indeed, in July this year—the government had insisted that MGNREGA, as per the findings of independent studies, had helped reduce seasonal MIgration. To a question on what the government was doing to stop distress MIgration, the junior minister for rural development, Ram Kripal Yadav, had told the Rajya Sabha that the government has increased the number of guaranteed days of work under the rural jobs...