-The Times of India   The rural development department has finally made some changes to bail out the district administration in the last month of the current fiscal.  The rural development department has asked the district administration to allow the BDOs and mukhiyas to withdraw fund for the purpose of implementing MGNREGA schemes and for wages of workers. Sources also said withdrawal ofMGNREGA fund has come to a total halt after the panchayat...

The Planning Commission had released a report, yesterday indicating reduced poverty line to Rs 28.65 per capita daily consumption in cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas, scaling down India’s poverty ratio from 37.2 percent to 29.8 percent in 2009-10. Firstpost did an interview with Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission. Here are excerpts from the interview: When we say there is a 7.3 percentage points (from 37.2 percent in 2004-05 to 29.8...

The common man, whose concerns were at the heart of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s two successful election campaigns, doesn’t seem to be the focus of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget. Experts and political analysts say the aam admi doesn’t appear to be the dominant concern anymore, prompting speculation about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi’s role. She has thus far been setting the UPA’s social agenda through the National Advisory Council...

MGNREGS figures register a decline in desert State; Haryana forges ahead in the race Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the much talked about flagship programme of the United Progressive Alliance government, losing steam in Rajasthan? Doubts over the credibility of the scheme have sprung up in the State that ironically pioneered the right to employment movement in the country. Today Rajasthan lags behind its neighbour Haryana in...

Sounding a note of caution, the Economic Survey has stressed that for “growth to be inclusive” India must create adequate employment opportunities—a call that underlines existing inequality, including urban-rural income disparity, and concern that it may increase as more young people enter the job market. While India’s unemployment rate has dropped from 8.2% in 2004-05 to 6.6% in 2009-10, the number of jobless is still huge in absolute terms. The...