-CaravanMagazine.in Bina Agarwal is a Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was the Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. Agarwal has written extensively on land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; legal change; and agriculture and technological transformation. Her best known work is A Field...

-The Hindu Gondi is the lingua franca of the Maoist movement today, but All India Radio does not broadcast even a single new bulletin in the language. One winter morning, in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh, I was watching a group of Adivasi kids peering into their mobile phones. The early morning sun was mellow, and they were so engrossed that they did not notice me drawing near. “We are doing Bultoo...

-The Hindu Several instances of in-kind transfers being successfully implemented. Social sector groups want Finance Minister to review the implementation of alternative subsidy systems before going ahead with Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). “There have been several instances of in-kind transfers being successfully implemented in various parts of the country. Our appeal to the Finance Minister was to look at all the successful examples of alternative schemes before the government pushes ahead with the...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Hindu The National Food Security Act is finally making headway in the poorest States. Amplified by reforms in the Public Distribution System, a modicum of nutritional support and economic security to all vulnerable households is now a real possibility. Dhobargram is a small Santhal village in Bankura district of West Bengal, with 100 households or so. Most of them are poor, or even very poor, by any plausible standard. There are...