An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia did a U-turn on the highly controversial Rs 32 per day poverty line, informing Prime Minister and plan panel chairman Manmohan Singh that caps on number of beneficiaries of schemes with central subsidies will be done away with. The about-turn comes after Ahluwalia's earlier letter to attorney general Goolam E Vahanvati in October defending the "artificial" cap Planning Commission imposes on beneficiaries of various...

Good sections of rural India don’t want NREGA any more, showing the government spending pattern on the scheme. Since a large percentage of the village labourers have moved to the cities, it makes far better sense to develop an unemployment dole for them. The subtext is an accounting arrangement that ensures that like NREGA, the government can keep on rolling out similar entitlement programmes like the proposed Food Security Act, but...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has proposed social audits for the centre's big-ticket welfare programmes running under different ministries, on the lines of the scrutiny that he recently mandated for the flagship rural jobs scheme. "The concept has the potential to revolutionise the system. If we can have social audits for three-four major social sector schemes, it will change the way the country functions," Ramesh said. If the proposal is...

Revised MGNREGS guidelines to be finalised end of this week The revised guidelines for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is likely shift the social welfare programme's thrust from being labour-intensive to material intensive. This was indicated by the Union minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, on November 14 at a day-long seminar on the UPA government's flagship programme. At the consultations titled, Empowering Lives through MGREGA: Strengthening...