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A motley crowd of around 100 people

How have women been coping in the aftermath of farmer suicides in Punjab?

The Census of 2002 to identify the poor in rural areas of India was the third in a quinquennial series. However, it has been appropriately criticised. This paper elaborates on the criticisms, and proposes an alternative set of criteria and methodology for conducting the next (now overdue) census of the rural population to identify the poor.

Two centuries ago when the Cooperative movement emerged, markets were dominant and unmindful of the well being of consumers. The Rochdale Pioneers demonstrated the cooperative ability not only to help survival of the people but also of indirectly forcing the market to behave.

Tackling climate change effectively is going to require serious sums of money. Developing countries, many of whom are on the front-line in the battle against global warming, will require
large amounts of external public finance to adapt to climate change, combat deforestation and move to low-carbon pathways out of poverty. Rich countries, who have largely caused the

The 61st round (2004-05) of the National Sample Survey showed that there was a turnaround in employment growth in rural India after a phase of jobless growth during the 1990s. Paradoxically, this employment growth occurred during a period of widespread distress in the agricultural sector with low productivity, price instability and stagnation leading to indebtedness.

Shubhranshu Choudhary finds out why farmers

The farm is greener than five years ago, yet the bounty is hyped

While declining real product prices faced by primary commodity producers was one of the central causes of rising farm indebtedness, the gradual shrinkage of formal credit institutions in rural areas has simultaneously caused increasing dominance of private players in the credit market, rendering producers all the more vulnerable.

Depression in agriculture and farmer suicides continue, thanks to the misguided actions of Indian policymakers.

AS the outstanding Marxist economist Paul Baran had pointed out in The Political Economy of Growth, what is cooked in the kitchen is not decided in the kitchen. Similarly, what happens to agricultural producers is decided outside agriculture by public policy.

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