-TheWire.in A Minimum Income Guarantee would not just cushion exogenous shocks, but would arrest the process of vulnerability begetting vulnerability. While the worst of the pandemic is behind us, there has been a decline in general purchasing power amidst inflation. The provisional Consumer Food Price Index (combined for rural and urban) for September 2022 is pegged at 8.6%, a huge increase from 0.68% for September 2021. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)...

-TheWire.in While the system was rightly designed to eliminate ghost beneficiaries, the impact of exclusion errors needs to be professionally and independently evaluated in detail. The direct benefit transfer (DBT) system has come to dominate the discourse on public service delivery in India. The existing rhetoric around its efficacy being one of anti-corruption, cost efficiency, and elimination of middlemen. Payments under DBT are made to low-income households using an elaborate, digitised system...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...

-Livemint.com Rural economy has to deal with declining incomes and rising cost of essentials The general consensus on the state of the Indian economy can be summarized as follows: The economy has been in a deep crisis even before the pandemic-led disruptions. Second, the crisis is not a result of supply constraints but is a result of demand deficiency, particularly in the rural economy. Recent evidence suggests that the impact of the slowdown...

-The New Indian Express Punjab fares well in Union agriculture ministry scheme that focuses on enhancing income of marginal farmers and diversifying land use by paying attention to agro-forestry. PUNJAB:  For five years, 13,039 farmers across Punjab have been into agroforestry, which has emerged as one of the viable alternatives for diversification from the paddy-wheat cycle. In half a decade, 1.50 crore saplings have been planted, for which farmers have been given...