-Livemint.com Youth in rural India are often forced to work in their family farms, but they prefer joining the army or becoming engineers, teachers or nurses, the survey shows New Delhi: Youth in rural India are often forced to work in their family farms, but they prefer joining the army or becoming engineers, teachers or nurses, found a survey released last week. A large number of rural youth in the 14-18 year age...

-Livemint.com Farmers need structural reforms, crop diversification and greater public investment RATher than subsidies and price support Indian agriculture has been relatively untouched by the structural reforms that lifted incomes in other parts of the economy. Low farm productivity meant that governments tried to improve the lot of farmers through price policy. The problem is that engineering a shift in the terms of trade through higher support prices usually leads to generalized...

-The Financial Express Over 14 crore households who cultivate on land owned by others under a formal lease agreement or even under a temporary arrangement overseen by the gram panchayats or other official functionaries may soon start getting assorted sops doled out to “farmers” by the government just as their land-owing counterparts do. According to official sources, the definition of farmer will be changed via a gazzette notification to include cultivators...

-VillageSquare.in Strict parameters set by the central government has made it tougher for the states to declare a drought and seek relief funds from New Delhi Mumbai (Maharashtra): The Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to fight the occurrence of drought in the country. The Manual for Drought Management, released in December 2016 by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, prescribes “new scientific indices and parameters” for a “more...

-Business Standard The large informal sector is a consequence - not a cause - of the low level of development For decades, one of the central aims of economic policy in India has been to create conditions for workers to move from low- to high-income employment. This has usually implied a shift from the informal sector where productivity is low, to the formal sector where productivity is high. This process of “formalisation”...