Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
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As India moves to slow population growth, Bihar gets left behind -Rukmini S
-Livemint.com India’s south and west are now at replacement fertility, but it will be several decades before the country’s population starts shrinking Gujarat has now joined 13 other states at or below replacement fertility, new data from the SAMple Registration System (SRS) for 2018 shows. Bihar is now the only Indian state where a woman as of 2018 was likely to have over three children in her lifetime. The SRS is a large-scale...
More »There’s no one to fill Mahalanobis’s shoes -Atanu Biswas
-The Hindu India needs a top statistician to frame data-based policies for welfare and development In Poverty and Famines (1981), Amartya Sen argued that poor distribution of food, wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding were important reasons for the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, while Madhusree Mukerjee, in her 2010 book, Churchill’s Secret War, wrote of the role of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his wartime Cabinet’s decisions and “denial policy”...
More »Re-enfranchise the forgotten voter -Rajeev Gowda and CR Kesavan
-The Hindu There must be the political will to usher in a ‘One Nation One Voter ID’ to ensure ballot portability In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has made it possible for senior citizens above the age of 65 to vote by postal ballot, given that they are at greater risk from exposure to the novel coronavirus. Hitherto, this option was available only to disabled citizens...
More »All about Odisha’s new credit scheme for 7 lakh landless farmers, a ‘first’ in India -SAMyak Pandey
-ThePrint.in Under the ‘Balaram’ scheme, the Odisha government will provide credit worth Rs 1,040 crore to 7 lakh landless farmers in the next two years. New Delhi: The Odisha government has launched a scheme to provide agricultural credit to landless farmers across the state. This is the ‘first’ such targeted scheme for landless farmers in India. Under the ‘Balaram’ scheme the Naveen Patnaik government announced Thursday, Odisha will provide agriculture credit worth Rs...
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