The UN has said what the Congress had been bragging all the time. The international agency has hailed India’s rural job guarantee scheme, one of the flagship programmes of the UPA government, saying that it has reduced poverty and reversed inequality. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) in a report titled “What Will it Take to Achieve Millennium Development Goals? An International Assessment,” says the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has...
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Rs 13,742-cr development plan worked out for Naxal districts by Shishir Gupta
Armed with integrated action plans for 35 Naxalite-affected districts in nine states, the Planning Commission is all set to approach the Union Cabinet for a proposed outlay of Rs 13,742 crore to wean away the tribals from sympathising with the Maoists through comprehensive infrastructure and economic development as well as proper implement of the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996 and related Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest...
More »Agri-growth and malnutrition by Ashok Gulati, T Nanda Kumar & Ganga Shreedhar
India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is...
More »Providing low-cost healthcare to villages by Anupama Chandrasekaran
That hospital births curb mother and child deaths is probably a no brainer. Convincing expectant mothers to get admitted to a hospital is only part of the problem in India’s rural healthcare system. The other challenge is abysmal infrastructure: There is just one hospital bed for every 10,000 Indians living in villages and one in 10 primary health centres in rural areas stumble along without doctors. The result is a human tragedy....
More »UNDP hails MNREGS
The latest report on the progress of millennium development goals (MDG) by the United Nations has said that robust social protection and employment schemes such as India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) reduce poverty and reverse inequality. In its report, ‘What Will it Take to Achieve Millennium Development Goals,' the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has said the MNREGS is known for improving livelihoods through legal guarantee of...
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