-PTI/ The Hindu Business Line Retail inflation for farm workers and rural labourers cooled down to 6.32 per cent and 6.28 per cent, respectively, in August compared to the year ago period mainly due to the softening of prices of some food items. Point-to-point rate of inflation based on the CPI-AL (consumer Price Index-Agricultural Labourers) and CPI-RL (consumer Price Index-Rural Labourers) was 6.39 per cent and 6.23 per cent respectively in August...

-Livemint.com * While 5.9 million white collar workers lost their jobs between May-August 2020, over the previous four months ended 30 April, this job loss number stood at 6.6 million when compared with May-August 2019 * Continued curbs and localized lockdowns have hit economic recovery and employment prospects NEW DELHI: Almost six million white-collar workers, including engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants and analysts, lost their jobs between May and August, the Centre for Monitoring...

-Down to Earth Sugar prices had remained depressed, which had affected the liquidity of sugar mills, a govt reply said While the new sugar-crushing season is set to begin from October, the outstanding payment dues to sugarcane farmers across the country stand at Rs 15,683 crore as on September 11, according to a reply given to a question in Parliament on September 15, 2020. Of this, Rs 12,994 crore pertains to crop procured...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Niti Aayog vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar releases the report, which provides the real picture of organic farming in India: only 2 per cent of India’s net sown area organically farmed, and a mere 1.3 per cent of farmers registered to do organic farming * Organic and natural farming must be upscaled to make Indian agriculture sustainable, says the report * Needs to be turned into a mass...

-The Indian Express To achieve economic growth of 7-8 per cent, the government needs to start addressing some of the traditional sore points such as the large infrastructure deficit, the weak financial sector, archaic land and labour laws, and the administrative and judicial hurdles. India entered the pandemic with declining growth and limited scope for a conventional and large fiscal stimulus. We had noted in an article (IE, January 20, ‘Limited scope...