India spends more on programs for the poor than most developing countries, but it has failed to eradicate poverty because of widespread corruption and faulty government administration, the World Bank said Wednesday. “India is not getting the ‘bang for the rupee’ that its significant expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups remain only party addressed,” John D. Blomquist, lead economist at the World Bank, wrote in...

In the hue and cry over minimum wages under NREGS, battle lines have been drawn between those who favour central government hiking minimum wage rates to the state minimum, and others asserting that the two must be delinked. While the former invoke 'a right to livelihood', the latter point to the NREGS being 'the employer of the last resort and the imperative of better targeting'. While these views have some merit,...

-The Hindu   For the first time, the Union government will carry out a survey on the use and acceptability of the alternative systems of medicine and employ the results for effective planning of a road map for Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH). The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has agreed to include some questions, in its Consumer Expenditure Schedule for the 68th annual round of socio-economic surveys, for collecting...

The grievance redress system in the country is “poor” and public service providers “lack accountability”. This is indicated by the fact that 95 per cent of the households that were asked to pay a bribe ended up doing so. This is revealed by a new survey, ‘India Corruption Study: 2010', prepared by the Centre for Media Studies. The report, based on a survey of around 10,000 households across 12 major cities,...

A decline of 2.6 million in elementary education enrolments from 2007 to 2010, the years of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan's trumpeted success, needs careful analysis. Enrolment data, based on school statistics, deals with the supply-side only. Census or NSS data , based on household information, gives us the demand-side of school enrolments. The two should roughly match, as they do in half of India, but not for UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,...