-The Guardian After a decade of success, the landmark scheme is being starved of money by a central government seemingly intent on reining in rural wage growth Ten years ago this week, the Indian parliament unanimously passed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). It was a historic legislation based on two interlinked goals: ensuring livelihood security to rural residents by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment...

-The Financial Express   With the High Level Committee (HLC) on restructuring FCI pointing to a 47% leakage in the 55 million tonnes of grain distributed through ration shops, the only viable solution is to shut down the PDS as the HLC has recommended be done over a period of time. Not surprisingly, many have argued that, in states that have restructured their ration shop operations-such as Chhattisgarh-there has been a dramatic...

-Business Standard Sensible suggestions from Shanta Kumar panel on food security The Shanta Kumar committee on food sector reforms has made a slew of recommendations - many of which, even if controversial, make sense. Apart from suggesting downsizing of the unwieldy, inefficient and corruption-ridden Food Corporation of India (FCI) by outsourcing many of its tasks to the states and other public- and private-sector bodies, the panel has laid out certain amendments to...

-Business Standard While the revised estimates of the gross domestic product (GDP) suggest the Indian economy turned the corner in 2013-14, concerns remain over the durability of this nascent recovery. Particularly worrying is the recent slowdown in rural wage growth, which signals a weakening of rural demand. Growth in rural wages, which had averaged 18 per cent in the previous few years, fell to less than five per cent in September...

-Business Standard Vegetables as a category showed deflation of 4.78% in December y-o-y, which meant prices started rising substantially in January New Delhi: Vegetable prices in Azadpur wholesale market have risen in the range of 20-40 per cent in January 2015 as compared to the corresponding period last year. A few items saw a rise beyond this range. While carrots turned expensive by 129 per cent, peas, spinach and cabbage prices increased...