-Business Standard States will now have to spend from their pockets to keep their social-sector schemes going The 2015-16 Budget seems to have broken the contract between the Centre and the states on sharing the economic burden for delivering social security. The Centre's assistance to the states for social sector schemes has come down from a budgeted Rs 3.56 lakh crore in FY15 to Rs 2.20 lakh crore in FY16. Effectively, while the...
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Food For Thought, Mr Modi -Ria Singh Sawhney & Jessica Pudussery
-Outlook A hasty transition to cash transfers without adequate banking services will do more harm than good for food security. As students we had been active in a campaign for the National Food Security Act (NFSA) since 2009. We met more than 100 Members of Parliament to explain why the law was important. Our own belief in the importance of the Act came from having participated in surveys to understand the...
More »Driven to distress -R Krishnakumar
-Frontline Kerala is facing a situation where health care costs are leading more and more people, not just low-income families, to financial distress. KERALA is once again drawing attention to itself, this time for a persistent trend of a large number of households being pushed into financial ruin because of the expenses incurred for medical care. Several studies have now found evidence for the many facets of this worrying development in a...
More »Nehruvian budget in the corporate age -Jean Drèze
-The Hindu The Budget overlooks the fact that human capabilities are as important as physical capital for economic growth and the quality of life. It goes back to the days when growth and development sounded synonymous, physical capital was thought to be the key, and human capital took a back seat Once upon a time, around the end of the Second World War, there was a naive view in development economics that...
More »Deforestation impacts monsoon rains, says IISc study -N Gopal Raj
-The Hindu India is the most affected, with 18 p.c. drop in summer rains THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (Kerala): Widespread deforestation, especially in the northern high latitudes, takes a toll on the monsoon across the northern hemisphere, with rains over India particularly badly affected, according to a new study from researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. By the 1750s, only about seven per cent of the global land area had been cleared...
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