-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...
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Poverty estimates trigger debate
-The Telegraph C. Rangarajan today defended his calculation that three out of 10 in India are poor, saying the poverty numbers provided by him were not conservative estimates and the methodology was on a par with global standards. The expert group headed by Rangarajan dismissed the Suresh Tendulkar committee's methodology and estimated that the number of poor in India was much higher in 2011-12 at 29.5 per cent of the population. The BJP-led...
More »C Rangarajan, Former chairman-PM's Economic Advisory Council speaks to Indivjal Dhasmana
-The Business Standard C Rangarajan, former head of the former Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, answers questions on the latest official poverty estimate by a committee he'd chaired. Edited excerpts of a talk with Indivjal Dhasmana: * Your panel has suggested these poverty lines be delinked from social welfare schemes. What would be the exercise's relevance? Is it of only academic interest? Poverty ratios have already been delinked from various social programmes. The...
More »Cereal indiscretions -Sonalde Desai
-The Indian Express The food security act is inadequate to meeting the malnutrition challenge. Malnutrition remains one of the biggest challenges facing India. In the last large survey, the National Family Health Survey of 2005-06, about 42 per cent children under the age of five were underweight. Economic growth has failed to redress this problem. Recently released estimates from the District Level Health Survey for selected states continue to paint a dismal...
More »Agriculture And Not The Stock Market Is The Reality Of India -Roshan Kishore
-The Citizen.in This piece is a rejoinder to an article by D K Joshi, which appeared in ‘The Indian Express' on June 4, 2014. The main arguments made by the author are neither new nor unique. Many neoliberal economists, including some occupying crucial policy-making positions have been making arguments which propose dilution of Minimum Support Price (MSP) policies to take care of excess food stocks with the government and also control...
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