-The Indian Express The working group includes Joint Secretaries of the Financial Action Task Force division of Department of Economic Affairs as well as the Counter Terrorism and Counter Radicalisation Division/Combating of Funding of Terrorist Cell in the Ministry of Home Affairs. A NITI Aayog group is working on a national policy to regulate Civil Society organisations following directions from the Prime Minister’s Office. Constituted in September last year, the Working Group for...

-The Indian Express The state must prioritise removing malnutrition, give uncompromising priority to improving primary health infrastructure In 1947, post-colonial India set off with the ambition of building a modern state on the principles of equality where citizens, by virtue of their birth in the country, would be entitled to a life of dignity. While the Constitution provided the rights to life, liberty, nutritional standards and maternity care, it did not explicitly...

-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated 18th March, 2021 The notified MGNREGA wages for various states/ UTs in 2021-22, released by the Centre on 15th March, 2021, has faced criticism from Civil Society activists. According to the press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated 18 March, 2021, the increase in MGNREGA wage rates for 2021-22 is extremely meagre. There is no increase in Kerala’s MGNREGA wage rate in comparison to...

-Scroll.in The report by Varieties of Democracy Institute said India is as autocratic as Pakistan in censorship and worse than Bangladesh and Nepal. India has turned into an “electoral autocracy”, an analytical research project by Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute said. The research institute had said last year that the Bharatiya Janata Party now closely resembles a “typical governing party in an autocracy”. A report of the organisation, which conceptualises and measures democracy,...

When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...