There is a growing chorus of views - representing some very influential writers in India and elsewhere - in favour of direct cash transfer into poor people's bank accounts as a more efficient social security net than the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Economist Arvind Panagariya has called direct cash transfer ''the least costly policy to give immediate relief to the poor". Having returned from a series of field...
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Employers let temporary workers go first during economic crisis – UN report
Workers who found jobs through temporary employment agencies were among the first to find themselves out of work as a result of the global financial and economic crises, according to a new United Nations report released today. The International Labour Organization (ILO) report noted that the largest number of temporary job losses was recorded in the manufacturing sector of developed countries, especially in the car industry. Spotlighting Germany, where between...
More »NREGA audit: Bhilwara shows the way by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The Bhilwara social audit team repeatedly came up against resistance. Yet the coming together of civil society and government in Rajasthan augurs well for the future of NREGA. For watchers of India’s grassroots democracy, the place to be in recently was Bhilwara in Rajasthan; the town and the countryside were decked out in carnival colours for an audit exercise that saw thousands come together — social rights activists led by...
More »Expand and re-orient NREGA by PS Appu
The recession is a promising moment to expand NREGA with greater emphasis on building social capital in a big way. Soon after assuming office, the first UPA government took an impressive step for the alleviation of rural poverty by launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was, indeed, a wise move to insulate the programme from the vicissitudes of electoral politics by enacting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...
More »In praise of honesty by Jayati Ghosh
It is rare nowadays to come across people of unflinching and unquestionable integrity. It is even rarer to find in such people a strong sense of personal and intellectual honesty that demands that they interrogate their own actions and arguments with as much sincerity as they turn on others. And it is rarest of all to find such people engaged in public life, where they would constantly have to face...
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