-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...

-TheWire.in It is set law that procedures cannot impact vested substantive rights – and the right to life and correspondingly, food, is the most substantive of all rights. “After a prolonged decline, world hunger appears to be on the rise again”, claims  a report titled ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (2017)’ by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. Nowhere is this more true than in...

-Newsclick.in Insurance companies have already earned about Rs.16,000 crore in three seasons. The much-hyped Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) – supposed to provide insurance protection to farmers against crop losses due to natural events – has turned into a bonanza for insurance companies while farmers are angry over delays in claim settlement, rejections and paltry compensation. Launched in 2016, four full seasons have passed since and the financial transactions show earnings...

Since jobs have shrunk due to the deployment of information technology in sectors such as banking, quotas won't guarantee employment, said Union Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari recently, according to a PTI news dated 5th August, 2018. But the truth is somewhat different from what Mr. Gadkari told journalists about falling jobs against the backdrop of demand for reservation by the Marathas. Let us see why this is so. The total number...

-The Indian Express One reason for the MSPs not having the desired impact could be the delayed announcement. Farmers usually make sowing decisions before the onset of the monsoon. New Delhi: The government may have substantially hiked minimum support prices (MSP) of crops being grown in the current kharif season. That, along with most parts of India receiving good rain until now, should have considerably boosted plantings by farmers this time. However, the...