-Down to Earth After two budgets and Rs 5,300 crore in funding, the Centre's micro irrigation project that promises water to every farmland is not even close to a roll-out The news of deficit monsoons this year has once again left the Centre worried. A concerned prime minister chaired a high-level meeting on June 8 where he emphasised the need to quickly augment the irrigation capacity of the country. But he conveniently...

The nation can be proud of running some of the world's largest programmes on social safety nets, says the latest report by World Bank. However, public spending on safety nets is still low in comparison to neighbouring countries Bangladesh and Pakistan. India tops the list of 136 countries for running the world's largest school feeding programme i.e. the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS), and also the biggest public works programme i.e....

-NDTV New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, has cost thrown up an ad bill of nearly Rs. 100 crore, according to information revealed through a Right to Information or RTI application.   The government has spent 94 crore only on print, radio and television ads to promote the cleanliness mission that PM Modi launched on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary October 2 last year. The BJP-led government's bill matches...

-Scroll.in Thanks to the law, workers have built roads where there were none, replaced scrublands with forests, levelled lands and made them cultivable. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act envisages that the works undertaken under it will strengthen natural resource management and address causes of chronic poverty like drought, deforestation and soil erosion, thereby encouraging sustainable development. However, the fact that it is not simply a work creation programme but...

-PTI WASHINGTON: India's rural employment guarantee programme MNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest public works programme, providing social security net to almost 15 per cent of the country's population, World Bank has said. India is among the five middle-income countries running the world's largest social safety net programmes, said a World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets 2015'. "The world's five largest social safety net programmes are all...