-The Hindu Allocation for anganwadis sees negligible increase of 0.7% Two lakh anganwadis will be upgraded in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech on Tuesday. In last year’s Budget, the government had renamed a few schemes and categorised them under ‘Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0’. Though the government is yet to share the detailed of the renamed scheme, on Tuesday the Finance Minister said this would include “new...

-The Hindu The trends in employment have not shown any clear and consistent patterns over the years The two important indicators of structural transformation in any economy are rates of growth and changes in the structural composition of output and the workforce. India has experienced fairly consistent changes in the first indicator, especially after the 1991 reforms, but the trend in employment has not revealed any consistent or clear pattern. The growth rate...

-The Hindu High demand in migrant destination States, not source States: it says Demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme has dropped from the peak of the first lockdown, but is still higher than pre-COVID levels, the Department of Economic Affairs said in its annual Economic Survey, noting that this is “an indicator of rural labour markets”. However, it cautioned against drawing conclusions about the movement...

-The Hindu The Government needs to stop India’s avalanching slide into a grossly divided society, made worse by the pandemic On January 17, 2022, Oxfam International presented its annual global “Inequality Report”. Titled Inequality Kills, the report calculated and presented the quantum growth in wealth of a minuscule few, and the simultaneous impoverishment of millions of working people. During the novel coronavirus pandemic, the report reveals, more than half the world’s new...

-The Hindu ‘Neither are the reasons specified nor a resolution process put in place’ Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh): About 15.2 lakh farmers in Andhra Pradesh are deprived of the payment instalments under the Centrally-sponsored ‘PM Kisan Samman Nidhi’ that provides input subsidy to them. As part of the scheme, the farmers will receive a sum of ₹6,000 per agricultural year in three instalments of ₹2,000 each and the transfer of the 10th instalment is...