-VillageSquare.in Despite its many health advantages, the cultivation of safflower for its oil is declining across India because farmers are not finding a ready market and are discouraged by the low prices it fetches Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka: Vijay Jagtap discontinued sowing safflower (kardi) last year on his one-hectare plot in Baramati Pandhare village, 12 km from Baramati town in Maharashtra. “The price we get for kardi is not at all attractive....

-The Hindu Business Line Rabi sowing down; sales of tractors and two-wheelers dip Mumbai: The demonetisation of high-value currency notes seems to have crushed the tender green shoots of economic recovery in rural India by choking off life-sustaining money supply and impeding the wheels of commerce from spinning. From FMCG firms to two-wheelers to tractor makers, companies had been looking forward to an increase in rural demand in the wake of an adequate...

-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...

-Hindustan Times Revolution imminent… genetically modified seeds produced by MNCs cause farmer suicides. Incendiary, out-of-context sound-bites juxtaposed between heartrending visuals distort rural poverty from a complex issue that each Indian must help resolve to a simplistic, accusatory Peepli Live feature. Instead of quixotic and strident anti-growth agendas offered as panacea, a coordinated and consistent approach to poverty reduction is needed. Poverty reduction needs development. The linkage between economic growth and poverty reduction is...

-FirstPost.com Even as the Narendra Modi government has been making claims that India’s rural economy has gained pace under his rule, empirical evidence suggests that the health of country’s rural economy may not have improved much on account of declining or stagnant income levels. The situation, experts say, is unlikely to change in the near future as there are low chances of a revival in rural income generation. A survey by brokerage...