-The Economic Times Vidarbha has over 20% of the state’s population and is the land of perennial agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Ten Lok Sabha seats are up for grabs in Vidarbha. In 2014, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine delivered a body blow to this Congress base (with NCP fighting separately then) by sweeping all the 10 seats. The BJP won 44 of the 62 assembly segments of the region without an alliance...

  Growth in rural wages not only indicates economic prosperity of the masses, it is also considered important so as to generate effective demand for goods and services, which is produced by various sectors of the economy. When money becomes available in the hands of rural workers due to government spending on programmes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), it generates demand for commodities. The production of commodities...

-The Hindu Business Line As the sector pays the price for governments’ populism, it is time for an all new approach Earlier this month, Australia and Brazil dragged India to the WTO for its market-distorting policies on sugar. Their contention was that the subsidies, including the extent of farmer assistance, far exceeded the norms set by the WTO resulting in higher sugar production/exports which dampen the international prices and, consequently, hurt their...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org Calculating water availability and crop budgeting can prevent over-extraction of groundwater and mounting farm debt. At 42 years, Bhagwat Ghagare seems young. But he is old enough to have seen his village prosper and decline many times. Farming had traditionally been small and distress migration rampant at Kumbharwadi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Between 1998 and 2002, a non-profit organisation, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), initiated a work related to rainwater harvesting...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of deliberately creating and highlighting contention on national security issues as a political strategy, Swaraj India president Yogendra Yadav warned that the long term result would endanger national interests. He was speaking in the context of the BJP’s response to Congress leader Sam Pitroda’s comments on the Balakot air strikes, and other efforts by the BJP to “hijack the electoral agenda”...