-The Hindu Business Line 10 years on, MGNREGA to get more funds   New Delhi: Barely three weeks ahead of Budget 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley indicated that the government could increase budgetary allocations for rural and social schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The allocation may be even higher than the ₹35,000 crore allocated in 2015-16. “One engine to grow further, despite the global slowdown that has also impacted our exports, can...

-The Indian Express As it completes 10 years, there is enough evidence to show that India needs the MGNREGA Nearly a year ago, the prime minister made a statement in Parliament about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). He said: “My political understanding tells me, don’t ever stop MNREGA… because MNREGA is a living monument to your [the Congress’s] failures. After 60 years of independence, you had to...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must open up conventional and unconventional avenues for women to find their way into the workforce Officials in the finance ministry are busy with budgetary consultations. At the outset, it needs to be recognised that the Union Budget is more than a mere accounting exercise as it lays out the vision of the government and provides a strategy to implement it during the course of that year. In...

-Economic and Political Weekly Health and nutrition indicators have improved, but remain unacceptably low. After a hiatus of a decade, we now have up-to-date information on the health and nutrition status of the population. Preliminary results for 13 states and two union territories of the much awaited National Family Health Survey–4 (NFHS–4) which was conducted in 2015–16—the first after NFHS–3 of 2005–06—have just been released. In a welcome development, NFHS–4, for the...

-The Hindu Ex-official says priority setting in India is based on consultation, not evidence. Bangkok: India faces serious challenges in implementing universal health coverage policies because of a “serious knowledge gap” among policy-makers and a “general unwillingness for change”, Rakesh Srivastava, former Director-General of Health Service, says. At a session on “Enabling better decisions for better health: embedding fair & systematic processes into priority setting for universal health coverage” here, Mr. Srivastava said...