There is an emerging consensus among various policy makers, progressive movements and academics regarding the efficacy of MGNREGS in dealing with the unprecedented unemployment crisis that followed the unplanned Covid-19 lockdown.
Building Inclusive Food Systems
The newly-released global food policy report of IFPRI titled “Building Inclusive Food Systems” has come at a critical juncture. The focus of the Report is on how to address inequality, and include poor and vulnerable individuals and households and communities in the food system.
When the Invisible Disappeared: Migrant Labour in Agriculture in the Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has, in real life, made the world recognise and appreciate the value of migrant labour. After the lockdown began, the mobility of migrant workers has been severely restricted and large numbers of migrant workers have returned home.
The Covid-19 Pandemic and Indian Agriculture: A Note
As India moves from regulations and controls to a total lockdown, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy is becoming ever more acute. The Indian economy, which was already facing a sharp downturn by the end of 2019, will surely record an extraordinarily poor growth rate for the months of March, April, and May 2020.
Women’s Access to Banking in India: Policy Context, Trends, and Predictors
There has been a gradual increase in women’s share in bank credit in India in recent years. However, the increase in men’s share has been greater, rendering a widening gender gap.
Randomised Controlled Trials and Non-Randomised Politics: What Makes for Good Policy?
The 2019 Nobel Prize in economics for the proponents of Randomised Controlled Trials fulfils the discipline’s highest aspiration to mimic the laws and methods of natural sciences to explain social order.
Studying the Rural and Liberal Education
If one runs an internet search for the word “rural” in the Indian undergraduate Sociology curricula, one expects to find multiple occurrences. When the result does not show a single mention of the word, it attracts the attention of an educator and teacher and raises the question as to why the word that dominated not only sociology but the syllabi of social sciences has disappeared.
Fieldwork in An Giang, Vietnam
I have spent about a month in Vietnam studying the present situation of rice cultivation, a sector that has immense importance in the economy of Vietnam.
Good Diets in the Asia-Pacific Region: Three Countries Score Top Marks
A new study by the regional office of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Bangkok, Dynamic Development, Shifting Demographics, Changing Diets, has put together data on trends and key changes in agriculture and nutrition in the Asia-Pacific region.
Drinking Water in Rural India: A Perennial Crisis
Shortage of adequate water in rural India is a perennial problem. As per latest data, almost one fifth of rural habitations did not get the minimum entitled quantity of water (40 litres per capita per day or two buckets a day). This shortage is aggravated in the dry season.
