-Live Mint The scheme represents Rs.2.3 trillion spent on wasteful rural consumption This week marked the eighth anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's key rural intervention, launched in 200 districts initially in February 2006. To the extent that such populist schemes helped raise wages without raising productivity. They have contributed more to inflation than to rural wealth. Worse, such schemes have...

A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: Last month, TV grabs of two migrant labourers with their right palms missing sent shock waves across the state. Hailing from Kalahandi district, part of Odisha's poor KBK belt, Nilambar Dhangada and Bialu Nial had to lose their palms for refusing to do the bidding of the labour contractor who had hired them for work in Raipur but was forcing them to go to Andhra Pradesh and work at...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Pan masala, gutka and several other tobacco products that are sold in pouches are set to get expensive as the government on Monday increased excise duty in a last-ditch effort to boost revenues. A statement issued by the finance ministry did not specify the extent of increase in excise but said the levy will now be linked to the capacity of production, which has increased due...

-Gulail.com The MB Shah Commission report on illegal mining in Odisha, exposes how private mining companies earned thousands of crores of rupees by illegally extracting precious Iron ore and manganese ore from the mines in Odisha. This is money that should have been used to eradicate poverty in this seriously backward state and improve the quality of life of the tribals and indigent villagers. But instead the money went into the...