-Down to Earth MGNREGA budget has declined in real terms over the years, despite claims of “highest ever” allocations In 2004, before India had any legal welfare entitlements for the informal sector, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, was furiously debated in the Parliament and the media. The aim of this legislation was to address the crisis of under employment and unemployment in the rural economy and provide job opportunities through public works...

-Governance Now Only 20 percent wage payments are time bound under NREGA, says a new study A new research on the implementation of national rural employment guarantee law (NREGA) disputes the way central government measures and offers the delay in compensation to workers. A group of three independent researchers claim that the figures in the NREGA management information system (MIS) have been manipulated to only partially calculate the duration of wage...

-The Hindu Leading hydrogeology scientist explains how India’s dependence on groundwater could lead to a crisis if left unchecked Mumbai: Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material, supplying and sustaining a range of human activity. Yet, because it is invisible and it’s supply often taken for granted, it is often inadequately acknowledged in policy and debates about the preservation of groundwater commons and aquifers. At best, it is usually shrouded in...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com New Delhi: An estimated 50 percent of children in the National Capital Territory of Delhi are undernourished, but a State Food Commission that can address the problem has not been set up. The Food Security Act of 2013 stipulates the setting up of food commissions in the states to monitor mid-day meals served in government schools and supplementary nutrition provided in anganwadis, which are mother and child care centres. It has been...

-TheWire.in The government knows what it wants to achieve where the environment is concerned, even if it is at the cost of the protection of ecosystems, and people’s livelihood and well being. The last three years under the Modi government have seen the transformation of the environment from being a field of relative stability and inactivity, to functioning as an active instrument of capital accumulation. The sharp polarisation between extremely positive initiatives...