-The Economic Times Over the last decade the UPA government has tried to reduce poverty by legislating a regime of rights accompanied by the national rural employment guarantee (NREG) programme -spending Rs 1,70,000 crore on this strategy. This strategy would have been fine if the transformation of India from a strong currency, high growth and low inflation economy to aweak currency, low growth and high inflation economy had been accompanied by a...
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Still holding onto the hope of a better future-Smriti Kak Ramachandran
-The Hindu It's been a year since the Indian Government announced the long-term visa facility for refugees, but many like Zaw Zaw's family, hailing from Myanmar, are yet to benefit. Three metal trunks and a few peeling leather bags are all it takes to hold together Zaw Zaw's 25 years. A hand-spun, bright, red and yellow peacock flag, discoloured sheets of papers and a few mementos from friends are all squeezed in...
More »No Country For Countrymen -Arun Sinha
-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...
More »More mines, fewer schools in former Maoist stronghold-Anumeha Yadav
-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...
More »Right to food or drinking water? -Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
-Live Mint The fundamental pathology of Indian policy is the overwhelming preference for subsidies over public goods One useful way to understand a fundamental flaw in policymaking in India since 2004 is to ask a rhetorical question: why is the ruling United Progressive Alliance aggressively pushing for a law guaranteeing the right to food rather than one for the right to clean drinking water? Take a look at the numbers. A February...
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