-The Indian Express A look at the scheme Rythu Bandhu, seen by Arvind Subramanian as a template for agriculture policy. Hyderabad: A support scheme for farmers in Telangana has earned the appreciation of outgoing Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, who spoke about it during an Idea Exchange interaction with The Indian Express journalists and then wrote in The Financial Express that it can be the template for social and agricultural policy. Called...
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Hollowing out a promise -Jean Dreze
-The Indian Express NREGA is a demand-driven programme and if the demand vanishes because wages are low and uncertain, nothing will be able to save it. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is going through a deep crisis of delayed and failed wage payments. The problem is not new, but it is more serious than ever and threatens to undermine the entire programme. The crisis has at least four manifestations: Delayed payments,...
More »Government 'Freezes' Health Insurance Rates, Ignores Private Hospitals' Protests -Anoo Bhuyan
-TheWire.in The government has fixed the insurance reimbursements for 1,354 medical procedures under its massive new scheme. They say they won’t revise this any further. New Delhi: Despite protests from the private health sector, that the government’s reimbursements to them under the massive new health insurance scheme are too low, the government has “frozen” these rates and is unlikely to change them. “The package rates are now frozen,” said health secretary Preeti Sudan. Dinesh...
More »Aruna Roy, social activist and Magsaysay Award winner, interviewed by G Sampath
-The Hindu The social activist whose new book on the RTI is just out, worries about the doublespeak in politics today, where rhetoric and substance never match The past couple of months have been hectic for Aruna Roy. The social activist and Magsaysay Award winner has been travelling across the country to promote her book, The RTI Story: Power to the People, which came out in April. After waiting more than a...
More »The ugly phenomenon of paid news -Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
-The Tribune The CobraPost sting reveals that the independence of the media and its ability to bring about transparency by playing an adversarial role against the establishment get compromised because of corruption within the folds of the media itself. The sting operations conducted by CobraPost, among other things, highlight how pervasive the phenomenon of paid news is at present in much of the mainstream media in India. Corruption in the media is...
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