-The Hindu NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya says farmers can't be fully compensated for crop damage. The Union government will increase the number of work days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme from 100 to 150 in places where the recent unseasonal rain and hailstorms have affected crops. The relief package will include cash compensation. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought recommendations from NITI Aayog on how insurance...
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Public funds to push neoliberal agenda -CP Chandrasekhar
-Frontline.in The Modi government has apparently realised that the private sector is not up to the task of driving growth. It hopes to fund its neoliberal dream of India becoming the fastest-growing emerging market through a combination of off-Budget borrowing and drastic expenditure reduction in key social sectors. IT will soon be a year since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office at the Centre....
More »MGNREGA Works and Their Impacts: A Study of Maharashtra -Krushna Ranaware, Upasak Das, Ashwini Kulkarni, and Sudha Narayanan
-Economic and Political Weekly This study reports on a survey of 4,881 users of more than 4,100 works created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Maharashtra. It provides evidence that MGNREGA works support agriculture, and benefit a large number of small and marginal farmers. An overwhelming 90% of the respondents considered the works very useful or somewhat useful, while only 8% felt they were useless. Further, most...
More »Vasundhara Raje turns to MGNREGA as hailstorms cause devastation of crops across 26 districts -Akshay Deshmane
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who had demanded scrapping of the MGNREGA last year, has now turned to the same law for helping her tide over a crisis. With hailstorms causing massive devastation of crops in 26 of the total 33 districts in early March - and Congress president Sonia Gandhi coming down to join protests against the state administration - among the multiple relief packages...
More »So Richie Rich? Have Another One On Us -P Sainath
-Outlook Corporate karza maafi reaches new heights, social spending new lows This year's budget write-off in customs duty on gold, diamonds and jewellery (all aam aadmi items, of course) is Rs 75,592 crore. That's well over twice the "record" amount allocated to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As Prof Jayati Ghosh points out, the MNREGA has given billions of person-days of work to tens of millions of poor...
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