-Frontline.in A Parliamentary Standing Committee pulls up the Rural Development Ministry in its report on a “critical evaluation” of the MGNREGA and calls for more investment in the scheme. A Parliamentary Standing Committee report of the Ministry of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, tabled in February, strongly recommends enhancing the budget for implementation of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, higher wage rates, and increasing the number...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-CBGA Blog India presented its latest Union Budget (for FY 2022 -23) in early February amid much hope, as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, which has lasted for two years. To deal with the pandemic induced socio-economic crisis, countries across the world  have been announcing policy measures outside of their annual budgets. The Indian government, too, made many such announcements, but given the scale of the...

-Press release by the Right to Food Campaign Secretariat dated February 23, 2022 * 66 percent respondents said that their income has decreased compared to the pre-pandemic period * 80 percent reported some form of food insecurity, 25 percent reported severe food insecurity * 41 percent said that nutritional quality of their diet deteriorated compared to the pre-pandemic period * 67 percent could not afford cooking gas in the month preceding the survey. * 45...

-Newsclick.in By doing so, the corporate sector seems to have cautioned the government against expecting a fast rebound in industrial activity, as there is sizeable idle capacity in the absence of consumption demand. Kolkata: Rural stress and funds for the rural job guarantee scheme were surprise additions in the organised corporate sector’s listed points for the post-Budget interaction with the Union government held on February 5 under the aegis of the Confederation...