-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-TheWire.in The focus of the Maharashtra farmers' march was on land rights for Adivasi communities. That promise will take a while to fulfil, and not much headway has been made. It has been a month since over 40,000 farmers walked 180 km from Nashik to Mumbai to press for their demands. They returned home with an assurance from the state’s chief minister that their demands would be met “100%”. Although chief...

-Livemint.com The historic farmer protest launched on 1 June 2017 had a nationwide impact and raised several demands of farmers which still remain unaddressed Mumbai: The Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, a farmers’ organization affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, will launch yet another protest on farm issues from 1 June to mark the first anniversary of the Maharashtra farmer protests. The Maharashtra state council of Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha...

  A national-level public hearing, which was organized at the Gandhi Peace Foundation (Delhi) on 15th March, 2018, has revealed that the intended beneficiaries of various entitlement-based welfare schemes and programmes of the Central government are witnessing difficulties and impediments in accessing the benefits and services. During the public hearing, which was organized by the Right to Food Campaign along with partnering grassroots-level organizations, poor and marginalized citizens from across 14 states...

-The Indian Express It is morally obtuse and analytically misleading to see farmers’ long march as a demand for handouts The “long march of the farmers” in Maharashtra refocused attention on the crisis in certain regions in Indian agriculture. It should be the headline news that jolts the nation out of a complacent stupor. The protest made a series of long-standing but familiar demands: Loan waivers, increase in MSP, implementation of Forest...