-Down to Earth India ranked 19th among 45 developing countries assessed by UK-based organisation India has made quite some progress in countering hunger and under-nutrition in the past two years but Nepal and Bangladesh have done better and have shown serious commitment through political will, says the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) report, 2013. The annual HANCI report, prepared by non-profit Institute of Development Studies and International Food Policy Research Institute funded...
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Jaitley gives States more freedom in MgNREGA implementation
-The Hindu Business Line Budget allocation for rural jobs scheme raised marginally to ₹33,353 crore NEW DELHI: In a major rejig of the UPA's flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA), the BJP-led Government has converted the programme from being a Central to a State Plan scheme. This change, however, did not find explicit mention in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's Budget speech. In the previous Government's 2013-14 Budget, a total amount...
More »Dalit women ensure Mid Day Meals for children -Shuriah Niazi
-One World South Asia/ Women's Feature Service This is a success story. The backdrop: a small, dusty village in Madhya Pradesh; the protagonists: oppressed dalit women, who managed to shed their inhibitions and overcome centuries old caste and class baggage to save their children from the curse of hunger and severe malnutrition. Mundalana village in Sonkatch block of Dewas district is home to 800 dalits, out of a total population of 2,600. Owing...
More »'Vidarbha farmers will continue to find suicide more attractive' -Ramu Bhagwat
-The Times of India NAGPUR: Several new components like stress on irrigation in dry-land areas, price stabilization fund, bringing landless farmers in pale of institutional finance through NABARD for working on leased lands, allowing MgNREGA in farm work have won bouquets for finance minister Arun Jaitley from farm activists. "Move to set up a national market for farm produce, micro irrigation and watershed schemes in drought-prone regions, crop loan facilities to landless...
More »No going back on MgNREGA -Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy
-The Indian Express The budget will reveal whether the BJP is committed to this transformative programme. Mohandas Pai, currently an advisor to the BJP government in Rajasthan, was asked on television how the government could "control" social sector expenditure, more specifically on the MgNREGA. He answered that the NDA should simply learn from and follow former Union minister P. Chidambaram's policy of "benign neglect". Clarifying further, he explained how the UPA...
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