-Down to Earth The government is clueless about incentives it has promised under its Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana to bring every family under the formal banking system ON AUGUST 15, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced extending the financial inclusion plan of the former UPA government and renamed it Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), he was well aware of its limitations. Though launched in 2010, the plan had miserably failed...
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Warming signals -Navroz K Dubash
-The Indian Express Attitudes toward climate change in India can appear paradoxical. Although India is one of the countries most deeply vulnerable to climate impacts, climate change does not rank high on policymakers' list of concerns. Two factors explain this inattention. First, India has pressing and immediate development concerns, such as providing sanitation, improved healthcare and access to affordable energy to its population, while the effects of climate change appear abstract...
More »How to reform and how not to -Mihir Shah
-The Hindu Every effort needs to be made to reform MGNREGA, as it has been both a major success and a huge failure. The best way for this is to study carefully the conditions that made it a success and also to undertake a diagnostics of its failures An impression has gained ground in recent weeks that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre is inimical to the Mahatma Gandhi...
More »Civil society questions Modi about Indo-US joint IP working group -Jitendra
-Down to Earth Letter to Modi says Indian government should be wary of higher IP standards that are typically demanded by the US administration and its trade negotiators in bilateral negotiations People's organisations have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make public the specific purpose of the Indo-US joint working group on Intellectual Property (IP) and pursue inclusive public consultations approach for the formulation of country's IP policy. The demand follows Modi's...
More »Nod to Dibang project shows why present forest clearance process needs to be scrapped -Chandra Bhushan
-Down to Earth Persisting with the current institutional arrangement will do more harm than good The manner in which the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has agreed to divert 4,578 hectares (ha) of prime forestland to construct the 3,000 MW Dibang multipurpose project (DMP) has yet again convinced me of the need to replace the present system of granting forest clearances. FAC, in its...
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