Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) a poverty buster? Or is it a job destroyer? The answer seems to be both, though the scheme of late, has been bedevilled by corruption and many states have lost their enthusiasm for it, forcing the rural development ministry to revamp the scheme last week (read here about the changes). While the scheme has been attacked for many reasons – bloating rural...
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A very poor programme by Surjit S Bhalla
MGNREGA 2.0 should really be MGNREGA 0.0 — it has been outdated from the start, five years ago It is a fact universally acknowledged that India is at a fiscal crossroads. It swerved quite significantly to populism over the last several years, and the consequences of this lurch are that the UPA’s own finance minister is (thankfully) losing sleep over the fiscal burden. More specifically, over the subsidy burden. As we all...
More »NREGA 2 aimed at bolstering UPA 2 by Prasad Nichenametla
The UPA government has widened the scope of its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to include works related to agriculture, animal husbandry, poultry, drinking water and sanitation. In its initial avatar launched over six years ago, the NREGA was limited only to works concerning water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development. It was largely seen as a subsistence dole for the rural people in the lean...
More »Mayawati sucks happiness of sugar mills to give one sweet deal to 3.5 million sugarcane farmers in UP by Man Mohan Rai
Passing by dense sugarcane and mustard fields, and potholed tracks on the outskirts of rural Lakhimpur Kheri, one reaches the large residential enclave of Mithun Kumar on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border. Introductions done, the 52-year-old proudly informs he has just booked a 2,000 sq ft plot in the upcoming Omaxe City township in Lucknow. "It will also have a club house and a mini golf-course once fully developed," he adds. As farmers...
More »Dr Abhijit Sen, Member-Planning Commission of India, interviewed by Ajay Vir Jakhar and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...
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