-Down to Earth Government reports say 2004-14 had the highest Agriculture Growth that has fast slipped back to near-zero growth despite normal monsoons and bumper yields The National Democratic Alliance government is scrambling to rescue the agriculture sector from a crisis never seen before. On January 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met over 100 economists in a first ever such interaction. Agriculture, rural economy and unemployment dominated the discussions. Modi’s promise of...

-Livemint.com There cannot be a solution to the problem of low wage growth in rural India unless opportunities for getting decent and productive jobs are available outside agriculture One of the anomalies that stood out from the broad narrative of rural distress was the stubborn fact that rural wages were growing, not just in nominal but also in real, or inflation-adjusted terms. And if real rural wages were seeing higher growth, surely...

-Livemint.com Sluggish wage growth, lower crop planting, fluctuating prices paint a dismal picture for farmers and the agriculture sector New data released by the government on rural wages, crop prices and sowing of winter crops reveals that rural distress is worsening. Planting of wheat, the main winter crop, between October and early January was 5% lower than a year ago due to lower sowing in Madhya Pradesh by close to a million hectares;...

-Newsclick.in   PM Modi - who promised to create 1 crore jobs - is supremely indifferent to this crushing crisis.   In Jind district of Haryana, 8 posts of peon and one post of process server were advertised. Authorities were inundated with 14,836 applications for the former and 3662 for the latter. That’s about 2055 applicants per vacancy. Although the peon’s position required just class 10 eligibility, graduates, post graduates and even PhD...

-Livemint.com The agriculture sector is expected to grow higher than projected 2.1% growth rate in 2017-18 due to likely better output of Kharif and Rabi crop s, the ministry said New Delhi: Days after the Central Statistics Office (CSO) estimated India’s farm growth rate at a poor 2.1% in 2017-18, the agriculture ministry on Sunday said it expects the farm sector to grow at a much higher rate, based on better-than-expected production...