-VillageSquare.in Recent amendments to laws that govern the use of land owned by tribals in Jharkhand has led to a rash of protests because local communities feel that they might lose their land and livelihoods to industrial development Last year in May, when the Jharkhand government announced to remove handcuffs from all the statues and pictures of Birsa Munda, the indigenous people of the state lauded the newly appointed first non-tribal chief...

-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...

-India Today 79 children aged below six years die every day in Madhya Pradesh and this shows that the infant mortality rate in Madhya Pradesh is worse than even many African nations. More than 28,000 children aged less than six years have died in Madhya Pradesh in the past one year due to malnourishment and diseases resulting from it. The state women and child welfare department while accepting that children died because...

-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...

-PTI The Gujarat government should build separate crematoriums for Dalits in those villages where the community is still facing problems, the Scheduled Castes Welfare Committee of the Gujarat Assembly has suggested. The Assembly panel, which serves as the watchdog of welfare schemes being run by various government departments for SCs in Gujarat, also recommended reservation system for the recruitment in self financed colleges in Gujarat. These suggestions were made in two of the...