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The livestock sector provides promising opportunities and is assumed to bring desired growth in farmers' income, especially in less and poor endowed regions. The present study has delineated the entire country into four zones, viz. Least Performing Zone (LPZ), Average Performing Zone (APZ), Good Performing Zone (GPZ) and Well Performing Zone (WPZ) based on district level livestock income for effective policy formulation and implementation. The drivers of livestock income were identified through multiple regression framework for regional interventions. Crossbred adoption and crossbred milk yield with elasticity of 0.09 and 0.42, respectively, are found to significantly contribute to enhancing livestock income. Thus, crossbreeding should be geared up especially in LPZ as an income enhancement strategy. The buffalo farming has emerged as an important contributor in raising farmers' income through meat production. The productivity enhancement strategy for buffaloes along with indigenous cattle will be a win-win situation as these animals are well adapted to tropical climate of the country. Further, special attention is required for strengthening marketing network through cooperatives for better procurement and prices with utmost priority in LPZ, as only 12 per cent of milk produced is sold to the cooperatives. The state governments in conjunction with all stakeholders, including research institutions and private players have to play a catalytic role in mainstreaming the livestock development, especially in the identified disadvantageous regions/zone as an entry point for the socioeconomic upliftment of the region as well as the nation as a whole.

The study has empirically revealed that the widely discussed 'calorie-consumption puzzle' appears to have disappeared in the recent years and has established a positive marginal effect of income on dietary energy intake among Indian households. Nevertheless, nutritional effect of improvement in income varies across expenditure-classes, and rural and urban areas. The temporal changes have revealed a tendency of convergence in calorie intake across expenditure-classes between 1993-94 and 2011-12. The formal test of β-convergence (conditional) has shown that convergence in calorie intake is taking place at the rate of 7 per cent. Among factors conditioning β-convergence, real MPCE, food expenditure share and calorie intake from PDS have shown positive effects on growth in calorie intake. On the other hand, calorie prices and dietary diversification index have depicted negative marginal effects on growth in calorie intake. Resulting phenomenon is a decline in inter-class dispersion in calorie intake, which is proved through the test of σ-convergence. While this 'picking up of poor' in terms of calorie intake indicates strong welfare gains, analysis has shown that around four-fifths of the rural and three-fifths of the urban households are still undernourished. The findings imply that there should be targeted policy and program interventions to improve the nutritional status of poor households, while effective nutrition communication strategies are necessary to address the undernourishment among rich households.

This paper has documented the difficulties faced by farmers due to demonetization, facilities existing for making digital payments and farmers’ opinion about it. The study has used primary data collected through farm survey done in October 2017, almost a year after demonetization. The survey was made in three adopted villages under MGMG (Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav) scheme in Palwal district of Haryana. Results have shown that due to demonetization farmers faced numerous difficulties (both crop production and family related activities). They could not use quality inputs (particularly seeds of wheat) in desired quantity, got delayed payment of their crop produce and faced problems in drawing money from bank. Family and societal needs were also affected. Payment in cash was the main mode of transactions (and even now) for food and non-food articles. Analysis revealed that large number of farmers have bank account and are availing facilities of debit cum ATM card, but their functional literacy and infrastructure are inadequate. Farmers’ expressed both merits and demerits about digital payments. Nevertheless, without removing fear of farmers and other rural people and bringing change in their attitude, moving towards digital mode of transactions will not trigger desired results.

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