-Down to Earth Every rupee spent on weather forecasting fetches 50-fold economic gains to below poverty line farming families A survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has shown that timely delivery of weather advisories to farmers had a significant impact on their income. The survey was done to gauge the economic impact of India’s investments on the National Monsoon Mission (NMM) and High Performance Computing Facilities (HPC). It...
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When makka sells cheaper than bhusa: Bihar’s maize growers suffer lockdown blues -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Bihar produces a quarter of India's corn, but few politicians are talking about a crop that generates over Rs 7,500 crore annual income for its farmers. Begusarai, Khagaria: “Makka hai das rupiah aur bhusa chaudah (maize is selling for Rs 10 and wheat straw for Rs 14)”. This statement by Chandrasekhar Kumar, a 15-bigha (13 acres) farmer from Sapaha village in Gogri block of Khagaria district, sums up the...
More »The many lessons from COVID-19 -Soumya Swaminathan
-The Hindu What we have done so far, and what all remains to be done The global pandemic is marching on. As I had said at the JRD Tata Oration, hosted by the Population Foundation of India on its 50th anniversary, of the lessons I have learned over the last nine or 10 months, the most important one is the significance of investing in public health and primary healthcare. Countries that invested...
More »Sustained efforts required to reduce multidimensional poverty amidst the pandemic
Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...
More »Women spend most of their daily time in unpaid domestic and care work, shows the latest Time Use Survey data
Among other things, one of the reasons (given by some economists) behind low labour force participation rate (LFPR) of women vis-à-vis men in the country is that more young girls are educating themselves, causing an improvement in the secondary and tertiary enrolment rates. It means that more Indian women are staying out of the labour force in order to continue their education – secondary education and / or college &...
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