Zia Haq

A marquee programme of the Modi government, the Jal Jeevan Mission, launched in 2019, aims to connect every rural household with a tapped water facility by 2024.

Three US-based economists won the 2021 Economics Nobel Prize for pioneering ‘natural experiments’, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday

Haryana is the latest state to achieve the target under Jal Jeevan Mission, designed to connect rural households with a functional tap water connection, ahead of its 2024 deadline. Uttar Pradesh has covered 12.74% of its 26.4 million rural households

Close to vaccinating a billion people and witnessing a surge in demand amid a festival season, India is a net importer of many things, such as petroleum, electronics components, semi-conductors, active pharmaceutical ingredients and fertilisers

On October 2, a convoy of vehicles belonging to Ashish Mishra, the son of Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra, struck protesters, enraging farmers. A viral video a day later, reportedly of the incident, showed a jeep ploughing into farmers from behind at high speed in Lakhimpur Kheri.

The benchmark repo rate was unchanged at 4%, while the reverse repo rate too stood unchanged at 3.35%

India lacks an official periodic, high-frequency jobs survey and two quarterly employment surveys are meant to fill this critical gap.

The farm unions held an emergency meeting soon after Sunday’s incident. Their agitation will target all BJP leaders in Uttar Pradesh, where polls are due next year, a farm leader said.

Footprints of climate change on India’s farms are now visible to the naked eye. A line-up of over 1,300 varieties of hardier crops will be the first line of defence.

A widespread farmers agitation since last year against the Modi government’s three new farm laws and demand by the protesting cultivators for a legal guarantee for MSP has only prompted authorities to step up procurement of cereals even more.

Farmers’ fetish for unsustainable big cereals has begun to hurt, as returns diminish. Experts say the income slowdown is linked to an overdependence on big cereals, such as wheat and rice.

Consumer prices of pulses are rising an average of 9% each year but higher procurement and realisation of MSPs by farmers are lessons in managing other volatile food items.

In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shuffled his cabinet, carving out a new ministry of cooperation, which was earlier a department under the agriculture ministry.

The orders left “no doubt” in the mind of farmers resisting the Modi government’s three liberalising farm laws since 2020 that the government wanted them “killed”, one farmer said.

Tikait’s tweet tagging @POTUS, the Twitter handle of the US president, comes several hours ahead of an all-important meeting between the leaders of the US and India.

A proprietary microbial solution developed by the state-run Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), known as Pusa decomposer, is the best bet yet to prevent fires set by farmers to millions of acres of crop residue after summer paddy harvests, experts say

The jump in exports of agricultural and processed food products during the first five months of current fiscal “is in continuation of growth in exports witnessed in the financial year 2020-21”, an official statement said.

Coarse cereals output, such as oats and pearl millets, are set to be nearly 34 million tonne, higher by 2.11 million tonne than the five-yearly average production of 31.89 million tonne.

Export of fruits and vegetables clocked a 6.1% growth in dollar terms, while there was a 142.1% jump in export of “other cereals”. Meat, dairy and poultry products sold abroad increased 31.1% in the first five months of the current fiscal (2021-22), the data showed.

This technology thrust however runs parallel to year-long protests by farmers’ groups against a move to liberalise the agriculture sector through three federal laws

Amid continuous protests against the contentious farm laws, a Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Agricultural Households, Land and Livestock Holdings of Households of Rural India, 2019, conducted from January to December 2019 revealed a 59% surge in farmers’ incomes that are not adjusted for inflation, on a nominal basis

According to the Doing Business 2018 report, China had a score of 65.3 with a global ranking of 78, the same notch as the previous year’s.

The rankings have acquired the status of a prestige tag for emerging economies and are a key influencer of wide-ranging policies. External probe points to scam to push China and Saudi Arabia up; implicates former top officials

The move to collaborate closely with provincial authorities on policies in the farm sector, which supports half the Indian population, comes amid the ongoing farm protests in states, especially in states such as Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh

In March 2021, HT reported the Centre was in the process of creating a “digital agri-stack”, a hi-tech national farmers’ database that would give the government and agribusinesses unprecedented insights into the rural economy, quoting people with knowledge of the matter.

A cyclonic circulation over the Bay of Bengal, dumping heavy rainfall in West Bengal, moisture drafts due to a low-pressure formation over northern states and a rainy trail across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha has flooded large parts of several states, endangering crops.

NEW DELHI The Union government on Saturday slashed duties on edible oils to a decade’s low to ease prices at home, which have spiralled on the back of high global rates

Higher food inflation not only impacts poorer households more, which tend to spend a larger share of their monthly budgets on food, compared to the well-off, but they also throw the Reserve Bank’s inflation targets off gear.