-The Hindu Of the country’s 217 million children, nearly 50% endure multidimensional poverty, says Oxford survey About 31% of the world’s “multidimensionally poor” children live in India, according to a new report by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a poverty reduction project grounded in economist Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’. “In terms of countries, fully 31% of the 689 million poor children live in India, followed by Nigeria (8%), Ethiopia (7%)...

-Scroll.in Instead of wages for a short period of time, the family running the project in Lanka village will create an asset for life. Mahavir Parhaiya’s household in the remote village of Lanka in Latehar district of Jharkhand is bustling with activity. They are busy working on setting up a mango plantation on what was once a barren plot near their house, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

-HuffingtonPost.com A safety net for the poorest and most vulnerable populations. Recently there has been a lot of debate in academic and policy circles about mainstreaming climate concerns in development programs in order to build the resilience of vulnerable communities. One such development initiative is the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), whose main objective is to reduce rural poverty by providing a legal guarantee of 100 days' paid labour...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-TheWire.in In Gujarat’s Chhota Udaipur, MNREGA has helped villagers increase their earnings, improved connectivity in the area and led to higher farm yields. In the ubiquitous environment of the withdrawal of the welfare state across the globe, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in India stands out as a critical and unique intervention. MNREGA is a social safety net that guarantees 100 days of employment to every rural household...