-Livemint.com There isn’t any big base effect at work here, so the fall in wage growth is the result either of less demand for Rural Labour or more supply. Either way, it points to rural distress If economic growth is picking up, as all experts agree, why is growth in rural wages faltering? The accompanying chart shows that growth in rural wages for men, taken as the simple average wage rate for...

-BusinessToday.in New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a great orator. He also makes grand announcements about ambitious targets, leaving hapless officials and others to work out the details. And sometimes, exactly what he meant while making that announcement is not very clear to the people tasked with working out strategies and policies to achieve that target. One example is his speech during the Kisan Rally in Bareilly, UP, on 28th February...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

If someone is a rural male, what occupation would he prefer? A rational person might say that depending on the highest prevailing daily wage rate in a particular occupation (which is subject to seasonal variation) vis-à-vis the rest, he will make his choice.   An exercise undertaken by the Inclusive Media for Change team based on the latest available month-wise wage data of rural men shows that there is a seasonal variation...

-Livemint.com In the last three years, wages of agricultural labourers have increased only by 0.5% per year while those of non-agricultural workers have declined by 0.25% per year, the worst so far in 30 years The agrarian economy continues to be plagued by falling output prices, declining incomes and increased variation in agricultural production pointing to a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability among most rural residents. This has created an unprecedented demand...