In the financial year 2017-18 when tractor sales touched new heights, it was said by many of the NDA (viz. National Democratic Alliance) government supporters that rural demand has revived on account of adequate monsoon rainfall and higher minimum support prices for crops. Many economists and newspaper columnists also denied the existence of any rural distress. An alternative perspective, however, was also presented by rural economists like Dr. Himanshu who teaches...

-The Hindu The lives of tea-estate workers in West Bengal have worsened in many aspects over the years The tea plantation sector continues to play a significant role in the economy of north Bengal. There are 276 organised tea estates spread over the three tea-growing regions of West Bengal: Darjeeling Hills, Terai and Dooars. Besides the formally registered large tea plantations, there are thousands of small growers. According to one estimate, the...

-The Hindu Business Line Gujarat has cornered the lion’s share of central funds allocated for irrigation schemes in the last five years, according to a formal reply in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. The State got central assistance worth Rs.2,074 crore, or nearly 56 per cent of the total Rs.3,772 crore spent for Command Area Development and Water Management (CADWM) between 2014-15 and 2018-19, said Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in reply...

-Livemint.com * GDP estimates are based on accepted methodologies, says government * Subramanian made the claims in his latest working paper published on the Harvard University website New Delhi: India’s statistics ministry likely underestimated the impact of demonetization and the rollout of the goods and services tax (GST) on economic activity, leading to an overestimation of gross domestic product (GDP) figures, the finance ministry’s former chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, has said. On 31...

-TheWire.in "I think the fact that the whole [NSSO] exercise began with a fundamental premise of keeping it comparable, that has been forgotten." The fierce debate over India’s unemployment figures came to a head last week, when a jobs data report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) was finally made public. This report has been a source of contention ever since two members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC)  resigned allegedly...