-The Hindu Business Line A mint-fresh working paper by the Reserve Bank of India once again trains the spotlight on a problem that, for five decades, every policy-maker has planned to snuff out, failed to, and then wished it would go away if ignored. But financial exclusion simply hasn't, and we now have the central bank applying its forensic skills to an examination of its magnitude. The title of Working Paper Series...
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Health gap between countries is narrowing, but challenges remain–UN report
-The United Nations The health gap between poor and rich countries has narrowed significantly over the past two decades according to a United Nations report released today, which stresses that in spite of this progress, challenges still remain to achieve the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "Intensive efforts to achieve the MDGs have clearly improved health for people all over the world," said the Director-General of the World Health...
More »Rising farm wages will lift all boats-Neelakshi Mann and Jairam Ramesh
-The Hindu Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...
More »MGNREGA improves school enrolment, education
A recent statistical study by Indian researchers suggest that the MNREGA program in rural Andhra Pradesh might be having a positive effect on school enrolment and grades by improving the bargaining power of women within their household, as a consequence of earning wages in the rural job security program. The study is based on data from rural households in 5 districts in Andhra Pradesh and comprised of 3006 children, comparing...
More »Building euphoria-Himanshu Upadhyaya
-Frontline But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...
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