-Live Mint The current policy on compensating landowners could adversely affect character of India’s future growth The Parliament is currently considering a land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Bill (LARR Bill), as are various state legislatures. These are likely to affect the pace and character of future growth in India in a significant way.  Setting up new industries, service establishments and real estate development will inevitably require land to be acquired from rural areas....

-The Hindu A campaign launched by a community service institution to make selected villages in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan shed the below poverty line (BPL) tag has immensely benefited the poor families in the region and facilitated creation of new employment opportunities, small entrepreneurships and income-generating ventures. The youth and women are especially getting involved in new enterprises in large numbers. Kheria Purohit village in Deeg tehsil of Bharatpur district, where 15...

-The Hindu An anthology of independent evaluations of MGNREGA shows that it has provided income security, improved health, narrowed the gender gap and created useful assets   In the midst of the debates that prevail in this country over the feasibility of the world’s largest public works programme, the MGNREGA Sameeksha — an anthology of independent research studies and analysis on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, from 2006-2012 — is...

-The Hindu Business Line India can learn from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and China’s Gansu Programme to make refinements to its MGNREGA scheme. The development experiences of Brazil, China and India provide a valuable opportunity to understand the relationship between growth and distribution over periods of high rates of growth. The growth story playing out in all the three emerging economies have resulted in large regional as well as spatial inequalities, between rural and...

-The Economic Times The power failure in India on July 30-31 was big news in US media. When the radio and TV stations began calling with the question whether this spelt the end to India's claims to global-power status, my first reaction was to remind them that a similar failure of the grid in 2003 had drowned the entire Northeast and Midwest in the US and Ontario in Canada into darkness. But,...