-Business Standard Total horticulture production pegged at 333.3 million tonnes in 2021-22, outstripping Foodgrains output again India’s potato and tomato production could be marginally less in 2021-22 as compared to the previous year while onion output could be almost 17 per cent more than last year, the first advance estimate of horticulture production released today said. The government also said that total horticulture production is estimated to be at 333.3 million tonnes, a...

-The Telegraph The story of a reversal that may yet rescue Indians from being hungry and undernourished I first tasted kodo, a coarse foodgrain, when I was barely seven. It was at the home of our Adivasi domestic help in Piska, a roadside railway station near Lohardaga in what was then southern Bihar. The porridge she cooked with kodo, jaggery and a bit of salt tasted much better than the gruel I...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-Business Standard Since jobs will remain scarce for the foreseeable future, an unemployment allowance should be the next big social-security initiative, writes T N Ninan Crises in the Indian economy used to be the “normal”. In the 12 years from 1962 to 1974, India fought three wars, suffered four droughts that produced famine in places like Bihar, and lived through the first oil shock, which saw a quadrupling of crude oil prices. The...

-The Hindu Business Line Indian farmers gain as local wheat, maize, soyabean and mustard prices rise Prices of agricultural commodities, particularly wheat, maize, soyabean and palm oil, dropped significantly in the global market during the weekend, after having surged on February 24 when Russia ordered its troops into Ukraine.  The rates of most of these commodities dropped by over five per cent as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by...