-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...
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Urban surge at the cost of rural folks -Sruthisagar Yamunan & B Kolappan
-The Hindu Chennai: Even as Tamil Nadu forges ahead in urbanisation, income levels of rural households present a bleak picture, reveals the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011. The provisional data released on Friday reiterate the fact that the State is the frontrunner as far as urbanisation is concerned. Of the total households, 42.47 per cent are urban - the highest among larger States in the country ahead of Gujarat and Maharashtra. While...
More »92% rural homes run on less than Rs 10,000 per month -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Giving a more storied picture of rural India, the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) released on Friday says that a staggering 92% of rural households reported their maximum income below Rs 10,000 per month. Nearly three quarters of all rural household said that the income of the highest earning member was Rs 5,000 or less. The SECC was conducted during 2011-12 with some states completing it...
More »The Importance of Being 'Rurban': Tracking Changes in a Traditional Setting -Dipankar Gupta
-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...
More »Records may not show, but women farmers dying too -Priyanka Kakodkar
-The Times of India AKOLA: For the last 23 years, Rukhmabai Rathod had run her 6-acre farm virtually single-handedly. After her husband's death in 1992, the uneducated but determined woman took charge. She decided what to sow, how much to spend and stood her ground with banks and creditors. "She was anguthachaap but she understood everything," says her brother-in-law Babulal Rathod from the Kazadeshwar village in Vidarbha's Akola district. "I didn't think...
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