The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-The Hindu However, suicides among landowning farmers dropped slightly during pandemic year The number of Agricultural Labourers who died by suicide in 2020 was 18% higher than the previous year, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report released on Thursday. However, suicides among landowning farmers dropped slightly during the pandemic year. The farm sector was one of the few bright spots in the Indian economy last year, recording growth on the...

-The Hindu Business Line Labour Ministry has decided to change the base year of the Consumer Price Index for agriculture and rural workers Union Labour Ministry has decided to revise the wage calculation for India’s workforce. The Ministry, in its latest computations, has decided to change the base year of the Consumer Price Index for Agriculture Labourers and Rural Workers (CPI-AL&RW) to 2019. At present, the base year is 1986-87. According to a...

-Countercurrents.org Real life has a way of surprising theory. One of the most intensely discussed theoretical questions on the Left has been how to bring Agricultural Labourers and peasants, including well-to-do peasants, together in a common struggle against landlord domination in India’s countryside. Numerous Marxist gatherings have for years discussed the contradiction between peasants and labourers holding up a decisive resolution of the contradiction between the landlords and the rest of...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...