The Congress on Tuesday claimed that there is "real economic distress" in India's rural areas and asserted that the single most important policy response to the "crisis" is to kick start the agriculture sector with "adequate and predictable" MSPs for agricultural produce. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "guarantees", saying he had made a promise in 2017 to double farmers' income by 2022. "A quick look at how the rural economy is performing: For the first time in over 50 years, real rural consumption expenditure fell by 8.8 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18. Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, the annual growth rate of real rural wages was negative for both agricultural (-0.6 per cent) and non-agricultural (-1.4 per cent) work. "Tractor sales in India, a proxy for rural economic health, have seen a steep decline in key states in the west and south in the first 9 months of this fiscal year, dragging overall sales down 4 per cent. Tract