-The Indian Express Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Friday came out in support of NCP leader and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s suggestion to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the UPA’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme (NREGS) should be suspended for “at least three months in a year” so that agricultural labourers are available during the peak season of agricultural operations in various parts of the country. “He (Sharad Pawar) is a...
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Lopsided growth by Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
U.P.'s GDP grew at 7.28 per cent in the past five years, but the State ranks low in virtually every area of socio-economic development. IF statistics on gross domestic product (GDP) are the only criteria to evaluate the performance of a government, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government in Uttar Pradesh will have to be rated as one with highly impressive credentials. For, India's most populous State has recorded a...
More »Farms hit, freeze NREG for 3 months/yr: Pawar to PM by Ravish Tiwari
In the first high-level red-flag against the UPA government’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that while assets created under the NREGA “may or may not have productive use”, the programme was “adversely” impacting the agriculture sector by “drawing out agriculture labourers from agricultural operations”. In a letter sent to the prime minister late last month, Pawar is...
More »Markers and Supermarkets by Sukanta Chaudhuri
Some time ago, newspapers in Britain carried full-page advertisements from the curiously named British Pig Association. This consortium of pig farmers was clamouring publicly that the supermarket chains were squeezing the farmers dry. Alongside them, Britain’s dairy farmers complained that a supermarket cartel was paring down their prices, while production costs went up and up. These farmers too have powerful lobbies; they are still in business. To this end, Britain, like...
More »Parliamentary Standing Committee May Recommend Withdrawal Of UID Bill: Report by Nikhil Pahwa
A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance is set to recommend that the government withdraw the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010, reports India Today, citing unnamed sources. The recommendation is to withdraw the bill and introduce another one, because members of the standing committee found the project directionless, and that the bill and the project are not acceptable in their present form, the report states. It doesn’t quite mention...
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