-The Hindu A lack of sufficient funds, rampant payment delays and abysmal wage rates are to blame The ?11,000 crore fraud that diamond merchant Nirav Modi is said to have created is a figure that needs to be put in perspective. The total amount of wages pending under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme for the whole country (2016-17) was around ?11,000 crore too. This sum is a...
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Storms kill more in 5 weeks than all of 2017 -Amit Bhattacharya
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Storms across the country have killed more people since April 11 than all of last year. Since Sunday, thunderstorms claimed 94 lives across six States, taking the death toll in storms since April to 278. Fatalities in the first two weeks of May stand at 223, while 55 people died in April. Last year, storms claimed 197 lives, while the toll in 2016 was 216. The...
More »Meet Bakshi Ram, the man behind Uttar Pradesh's brimming sugar mills -Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-Business Standard From occupying 3% of all sugarcane area in the state in 2012-13, the variety that now covers 52% New Delhi: India’s sugar sector is staring at an unprecedented glut, with production topping 31 million tonnes. Sugar is suddenly tasting bitter as mills are finding it difficult to pay sugarcane farmers in the politically sensitive state of Uttar Pradesh. At the heart of the surplus lies a new variety of sugarcane called CO-0238,...
More »Delayed payments under MNREGA decline to six-year low: SBI report
-PTI New Delhi: Delayed payments under the guaranteed rural employment programme MNREGA fell to a six-year low of Rs 67,956 crore in the last fiscal ended March 31, an SBI research report said today. The amount of delayed payments had touched a high of Rs 2.38 lakh crore in 2015-16. It was Rs 2.08 lakh crore in 2016-17, said the SBI Ecowrap report based on government data. On the other hand, total...
More »How to improve agricultural productivity -Bjorn lomborg & Saleema Razvi
-Livemint.com Investments in irrigation, combined with better-quality seeds, can dramatically improve returns to farming Global attention has been devoted to water scarcity and its effect on Indian farmers. However, new analysis from Indian researchers suggests that far more good could come if irrigation were combined with seed improvement. Tata Trusts and Copenhagen Consensus have commissioned new research by noted experts from India and around the world, looking at measures that would help Indian...
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