-The Hindu Lower surplus, higher prices could help reduce arrears to farmers in poll bound U.P. and Punjab Unseasonal rains in Uttar Pradesh and a higher diversion to ethanol production are likely to result in a drop in sugar production this year, according to industry estimates. With average retail sugar prices also on the rise, a reduction in surplus sugar could help speed up cane payments by mills and reduce their pending...

-The Hindu States creating artificial demand, says official; workers pushed into ‘forced labour’ by delayed payments, say activists The Centre’s flagship rural employment scheme has run out of funds halfway through the financial year, and supplementary budgetary allocations will not come to the rescue for at least another month when the next Parliamentary session begins. According to its own financial statement, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme shows...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org It's been hard days for powerloom weavers in the city's Bazardiha cluster – with lockdowns and monsoon flooding. But it’s the UP government’s review of their electricity subsidy that has them the most worried In the narrow lanes of Bazardiha, amid the clacking sounds of powerlooms, Wasim Akram is busy at work. He has been weaving since the age of 14 in the same two-storey brick-cement house – generations old, as...

-Scroll.in With the aim of understanding inequality from the lens of opportunities, a new index measures the disproportionality of access across the country. The concept of equality of opportunity is rooted in the Rawlsian philosophical tradition, whereby people are expected to construct a society in a way that they would be happy for their position in society to be determined by a random draw. He argued that social positions should be formally...

-TheWire.in Corruption, poor quality construction materials and the specious implementation of schemes combined with the Centre’s flawed MSP policies have rendered the attempt to transform the region useless. Chitrakoot/ Banda: On a freezing night in early January, as anchors on television and radio jubilated in the new year and extolled the many ‘achievements’ of the incumbent government, Madhav Prasad, a 55-year-old farmer in Bundelkhand, lay anxious on a cot in his hut.&NBSp; The...