-Business Standard According to NSSO, employment surveys, women participation rates in India fell sharply after 2004-05 India ranks 120 among 131 countries on women labour participation, according to a report by International Labour Organization. Traditionally, this has been blamed on a culturally patriarchal society and rising family incomes that allow more women to stay at home. A new paper by World Bank economists blames a "jobs deficit" for the decline in female labour...

-The Asian Age Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) a “living monument” of the failure of the economic policies of the Indian National Congress which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947? Or is it that the MGNREGA, a law enacted a decade ago which seeks to implement the world’s biggest and most ambitious job creating scheme, one of the few...

-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...

-The Hindu The Health Ministry’s plan for a malaria-free India by 2030 is laudable, but grand pronouncements are meaningless as long as manipulated data distort our knowledge and bad governance impedes genuine attempts to fight the disease This month, the Health Ministry will unveil an ambitious new plan to eliminate malaria from the country by 2030. A malaria-free India certainly sounds like a dream, or maybe an early campaign promise: the disease...

-Business Standard We should work in unison to boost growth: FM Even as the Centre harped on devolving higher share of funds to states following the recommendations of the 14th finance commission, the latter demanded that they be given more money and the Union government should retain its share of funding for centrally-sponsored schemes in the upcoming Budget. At the pre-Budget meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday, states also sought more...