Budget 2011-12 marks a sharp retreat of the government from the social and economic sectors. It has cut back expenditures in sectors that matter to common people, especially the poor. On the other hand, it has given huge concessions to the corporate sector in the form of tax cuts and exemptions. Let us take the overall fiscal stance of the budget. The underlying strategy is to reduce its fiscal deficit to...
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With bananas, NREGA to ‘bear fruit’ at last by Surbhi Khyati
To invest the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) funds in a “fruitful” way, the state’s Department of Rural Development has decided to create a banana plantation over 1 lakh acres. The project will take off in July and will benefit around 1.5 lakh farmers, said Manoj Kumar Singh, the state’s Secretary of Rural Development and Horticulture and Food Processing. Singh was the Chief Guest of a “Mango Gosthi and...
More »Live on FM radio by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Money makes news. When it is found, promiscuously. And when it is lost, presumptively. And when it is found to lie hidden. Also when it stands brazenly, as in election candidatures. Does hunger, to satisfy which money, income, wages — the power to purchase food — are needed, make news? Does the crisis in our agriculture make news? When Amartya Sen speaks of hunger and malnutrition, when MS Swaminathan does so...
More »NAC undermined by Praful Bidwai
By stubbornly overruling the National Advisory Council, the government risks defeating its purpose as a body that speaks for the poor and the disadvantaged. HAS the Manmohan Singh government begun to regard the National Advisory Council (NAC) as an adversary who should be undermined? Going by their exchanges on key issues such as food security, wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes...
More »Chasing a mirage by KPM Basheer
Though wages are not significantly high, West Asia continues to attract the poor looking for a break… In Benyamin's award-winning Malayalam novel Aadu Jeevitham (A Sheep-like Life), based on a true life story, the protagonist, Najeeb, is held as a slave labourer on a sheep farm in a faraway desert in Saudi Arabia. For three years, he is forced to do back-breaking work, is kept half-hungry and is denied water to...
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