The Niti Aayog recently released its National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, according to which the poverty headcount ratio declined from 24.85 percent in 2015-16 to 14.96 percent in 2019-21. In absolute numbers this translates to 135 million people exiting multidimensional poverty in this time period. In addition, a few days earlier, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its own Multidimensional Poverty Index, which in a press note said that,...

-The Hindu The increasing cost of production and the increase in GST on cartons has triggered protests in Himachal Pradesh Apple growers in Himachal Pradesh are out on the streets some three decades after their last big agitation. The protests are not surprising; their anger has been simmering for a while. To understand the present crisis, it is crucial to understand the developments of the last few decades. In the 1970s and 1980s,...

-The Hindu The Wistron incident is an example of how exploitative labour practices could accompany businesses moving to India Apple’s decision to place its Taiwanese supplier, Wistron Corp., on probation by not giving new orders — after an audit of the serious lapses in labour practices that led to violence in its facility in Narasapura in Karnataka — is a step forward in corporate accountability and ethical business operations. Pressured by Apple’s...

-The Indian Express Mainstay of the state’s economy, three-fourths of India’s total production, Kashmir apples have survived spot-less through the Valley’s 30-year insurgency. Is this about to change, as the Centre takes over procurement in its bid to restore ‘normalcy’, militants strike back with threats, and growers watch their fruit rot? An Indian Express report An olive-green mine-proof Caspir vehicle of the Army stands in front of a long, tin-roofed platform...

-The Indian Express NAFED has been tasked with purchasing all the apples that growers bring to sell at mandis in the Valley. A bumper crop, for which there would hardly be any private buyers with all the current movement restrictions, makes it all the more challenging. The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) has not bought a single kilogram of apples for the last three decades or more. “We did...