-The Hindu States creating artificial demand, says official; workers pushed into ‘forced labour’ by delayed payments, say activists The Centre’s flagship rural employment scheme has run out of funds halfway through the financial year, and supplementary budgetary allocations will not come to the rescue for at least another month when the next Parliamentary session begins. According to its own financial statement, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme shows...

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...

-The Tribune It must be recognised that a practice that has been going on for over 50 years cannot be stopped at once. Farmers need economically viable solutions. Farmers should have the choice to adopt a solution that best suits them. A sustainable agricultural system is one that produces abundant food without depleting the earth’s resources and without polluting the environment. Thus, it is best if crop stubble is incorporated into...

Remote teaching and learning promoted by Edtech companies as an alternative to physical classrooms, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have a sizeable consumer base in our country. However, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are only a few takers of online education. In reality, class and caste-divide, which is more prominent in rural areas, affects access to digital learning. The majority of the school going...

-Newsclick.in As India celebrates its 75th Independence Day, there is a record harvest of foodgrains; but why are so many people hungry? India has reaped an all-time high food grain harvest for 2020-21 of nearly 309 million tonnes (MT), or nearly 31 crore tonnes, according to latest estimates by the agriculture ministry. This was propelled by record harvests of wheat (109.5 MT), rice (122.3 MT), nutri/coarse cereals (51.2 MT) and pulses (25.7...