-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...
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Stop this jobs charade: on India's unemployment problem -Praveen Chakravarty & Jairam Ramesh
-The Hindu India must debate solutions to the employment problem, as a true democracy should and would In January this year, the Prime Minister made this statement: “7 million new jobs created in 2017”. The statement draws on false conclusions of a study by two economists. Here is another: “10-12 million young people join the workforce every year and 7 million new and formal jobs were created in 2017,” said the Minister of...
More »In historic move, Odisha gives land rights to 2,000 slum dwellers -Ashok Pradhan
-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: In an unprecedented move described by industrialist Ratan Tata as ‘earth-shaking’, and which prompted Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to take recourse to British author Aldous Huxley, Odisha on Monday provided land rights certificates to 2,000 landless slum dwellers and promised to develop modern urban habitats complete with roads, street lights, parks and playgrounds for them. The initiative is the culmination of the Odisha Land Rights to Slum...
More »A pattern of impunity: on the SC/ST Act -G Sampath
-The Hindu The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to...
More »Jean Dreze, development economist and social activist, interviewed by Rupashree Nanda (CNN-News18)
-News18.com In an interview with News18’s Rupashree Nanda, Dreze, who was a member of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council and an architect of the National Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), says that there have been no major initiatives in the social field in the last four years, with the partial exception of Swachh Bharat. Government data reveal that the Indian economy is growing at a robust rate but noted economist Jean Dreze believes...
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