-The Pioneer Forget about doling out mandatory unemployment allowance under the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), majority of the Congress-ruled States in the country are yet to notify unemployment allowance rules under the UPA's flagship rural job scheme launched in 2007. The rules mandate the States to pay the daily allowance to a registered worker if he is not provided a job within 15 days of the receipt...
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Food waste harms climate, water, land and biodiversity–new FAO report
-FAO Direct economic costs of $750 billion annually - Better policies required, and "success stories" need to be scaled up and replicated Rome: The waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself, says a new FAO report. Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first...
More »Database error: Why Delhi's failed experiment shows government should not use them -M Rajshekhar
-The Economic Times In the leaky system of welfare delivery, databases are the newest valve that governments are installing to ensure that benefits reach those-and only those -they are intended for. Since December 2012, for instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh has been appending on to the Centre's Socio Economic and Caste Census a host of household-level data: bank account numbers, NREGA card numbers, welfare entitlements, land ownership, whether their house is...
More »Do crop intensification techniques hold the key to food security?-Caspar van Vark
-The Guardian Indian farmers have seen increased yields not just in rice but also in wheat cultivation. Could SCI curb hunger in low-resource communities? Yields achieved under the system of rice intensification (SRI) have made headlines in recent years, with one farmer in India reported to have produced a record-breaking 22.4 tonnes from one hectare of land in 2011. But why stop at rice? Farmers and NGOs have found that the same...
More »How Chhattisgarh managed to achieve and look beyond roti, kapda and makaan-Raman Singh
-The Economic Times I have often been asked how Chhattisgarh manages the contradictory pulls of sound fiscal health and welfare schemes. How did we manage to roll out food and nutrition security to not just the most needy among us but to almost the entire population of a state that has had a history of malnutrition and neglect, without jeopardising Chhattisgarh's finances? As finance minister for the last eight years, I have...
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