In order to get a deeper understanding of the problems in the rain-fed areas, the NAC on natural resources management would soon hold consultations with the rural development ministry, states and NGOs Concerned over asset creation under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) will explore ways and means to maximise the rural job plan in developing the rain-fed areas in...

Cash transfer as substitute for state service provision is a dangerous recipe for callously anti-poor and corrupt governance. THE staggering number of recent articles, papers and books on the virtues of giving cash in place of public services to the poor has created an impression that a sort of epidemic has broken out. Economists, policymakers, bureaucrats and newspaper commentators are all infected by it and are in turn infecting others. The central...

Many Indians eat poorly. Would a “right to food” help? “LOOK at this muck,” says 35-year-old Pamlesh Yadav, holding up a tin-plate of bilious-yellow grains, a mixture of wheat, rice and mung beans. “It literally sticks in the throat. The children won’t eat it, so we take it home and feed it to the cows.” Mrs Yadav has brought her children to a state-run nursery in Bhindusi village in rural Rajasthan. The...

Sometime this month, Justice N Ramamohana Rao of the Andhra Pradesh High Court will deliver a verdict that will directly impact earnings of the 114 million people who work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Central government's work guarantee programme. The verdict will also indirectly impact earnings of the 400 million workers and labourers who toil in India's factories and fields for 'minimum wages'. The question Justice Rao...

Armed with a clutch of numbers, drawing on raw data as well as intelligent guesswork, Leela Visaria had six years ago generated a figure for India’s population in 2011 that is closest to what the 2011 census has actually thrown up. Visaria, a demographer at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), an academic institution in Ahmedabad, had predicted that India’s population would grow to 1,204 million, just six million away...