Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) a poverty buster? Or is it a job destroyer? The answer seems to be both, though the scheme of late, has been bedevilled by corruption and many states have lost their enthusiasm for it, forcing the rural development ministry to revamp the scheme last week (read here about the changes). While the scheme has been attacked for many reasons – bloating rural...
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Weeding out a gender bias by Surinder Sud
Women farmers suffer gross bias a global meet will look to change this Nearly half of the agricultural work is handled by women in developing countries and India is no exception. Yet, strategies for the development of agriculture are directed primarily at men. Barely five per cent of the extension efforts and resources are targeted at farm women. This failing, predictably, costs a good amount owing to loss of a part...
More »New approach to Nrega as it runs out of steam
-Rediff.com Even while the UPA Government is pushing for two more flagship programmes of food for all and medicines to all, its first flagship programme of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Nrega) is losing steam. More than 40 per cent of the Rs 40,000-crore (Rs 400 billion) budget sanctioned for it during 2011-12 remained unspent until December, prompting the Finance Ministry to propose a reduced budget for it in...
More »No Guarantee of Food Security in Children’s Incredible India by Razia Ismail
India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less. This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...
More »A very poor programme by Surjit S Bhalla
MGNREGA 2.0 should really be MGNREGA 0.0 — it has been outdated from the start, five years ago It is a fact universally acknowledged that India is at a fiscal crossroads. It swerved quite significantly to populism over the last several years, and the consequences of this lurch are that the UPA’s own finance minister is (thankfully) losing sleep over the fiscal burden. More specifically, over the subsidy burden. As we all...
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