The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

In ten years, the living conditions of the poor have been improving—but not necessarily because of the UN’s goals EVEN at 70, Jiyem, an Indonesian grandmother, gets up in the small hours to cook and collect firewood for her impoverished household. Her three-year-old grandson is malnourished. Nobody in her family has ever finished primary school. Her ramshackle house lacks electricity; the toilet is a hole in the ground; the family...

The National Advisory Council will meet on Friday again to discuss the National Food Security Bill but the basic tablet of principles could be substantially changed with the Sonia Gandhi-led group taking a U-turn away from its earlier demand for universalisation of the public distribution system. The proposal supported by the Planning Commission, suggesting that the Tendulkar committee figures for those living below the poverty line be the cut off...

In three districts of Haryana, they have been agitating against the land acquisition policy of the State government. WHEN farmers of western Uttar Pradesh took to the streets protesting against the acquisition of their lands and demanding a just compensation package from the State government, the central leadership of the Congress was quick to cite the example of Haryana, where, according to United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the best policies...

A United Nations-backed intervention involving cook stoves holds the promise of saving lives, uplifting health, improving regional environments, reducing deforestation, empowering local entrepreneurs, speeding development, and helping to stem global climate change. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined international efforts to dramatically boost the efficiency of some 3 billion cook stoves across Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the aim to protect women’s health and provide significant environmental...