-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...
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MGNREGA failure adds to Vidarbha’s suicide woes -Kavitha Iyer
-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...
More »Cash for Food--A Misplaced Idea -Dipa Sinha
-Economic and Political Weekly Direct benefi t transfers in the form of cash cannot replace the supply of food through the public distribution system. Though it is claimed otherwise, DBT does not address the problems of identifying the poor ("targeting") and DBT in place of the PDS will expose the vulnerable to additional price fluctuation. Further, if the PDS is dismantled, there will also be no need or incentive for procurement...
More »Ending the above-poverty line scam -Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera
-Livemint.com Bringing the bulk of the population under a common system of entitlements is the way to reduce leakages The reliability of the public distribution system (PDS) has improved greatly in a number of states that have a reputation for endemic corruption. In states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where leakages were as high as 50-90% in 2004-05, they are now of the order of 10-25%. This pattern, based on National...
More »Anaemic allocation leaves healthcare gasping for more -Smriti Kak Ramachandran
-The Hindu Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's announcement of new AIIMS-like institutions, tax sops for those who buy health insurance, and Rs. 33,150 crore allocation has given the health sector little to cheer. Though the draft of the government's new national health policy wants public health expenditure to increase to 2.5 per cent of the GDP, the allocation seems insufficient to meet the government's ambitious universal health assurance mission that includes free...
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