-The Indian Express There is a worrying dearth of Indian economists working on agriculture today. In his classic Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, John Kenneth Galbraith observed how the economics profession had a well-defined order of precedence. At the top were the economic theorists and specialists in banking and finance. At the bottom of the hierarchy were agricultural economists. George F. Warren from Cornell University was even worse — a...

-Hindustan Times Small and marginal farmers comprise 85% of the land holdings in India. Social protection is a survival tool for the rural poor, who have no easy access to wage labour. India recognised the need for social protection early on and introduced a slew of social protection programmes like the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides 100 days of assured labour wages...

-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: Experts feel that notwithstanding individual causes behind farmers' suicides, so many of them resorting to the extreme step shows that the average peasant in the state is in severe monetary distress. Unofficial sources put the death toll at 40 in the past two months. "Some of the suicides may turn out to be for reasons other than agricultural loss. But, the larger picture indicates financial constraints are...

-The Indian Express Why early life investment matters, and what we should do about it. With the success in reducing child mortality, the challenge before India is to safeguard early-life conditions in order to prevent long-run loss in welfare for individuals and the economy. Malnutrition rates for India are extremely high, with about 38.4 per cent of children being stunted and 46 per cent underweight (National Family Health Survey, 2005-06). There...

-Hindustan Times India’s back-to-back drought is likely to end in winter with the weather department predicting higher-than-normal rainfall between October and December in the southern part of the country and normal rains in the rest, boosting prospects of the winter harvest. The rabi, or winter-sown, season is vital since it accounts for nearly half the country’s total food output. The forecast eases worries about water shortages in the nation’s 89 nationally important...