-The Indian Express In yet another indication of the dismal performance of the scheme this financial year, less than 3 per cent households were able to complete the promised 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) this year, effectively meaning that 97 per cent of the beneficiaries have not been able to use the scheme to its maximum intended capacity. Introduced in February 2006, MGNREGA...
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Keep focus on social sector: United Nations tells India -Chetan Chauhan
-The Hindustan Times A United Nations report on Wednesday asked the government to increase focus on rights-based programmes - like the job guarantee and food security schemes - to eradicate poverty while praising PM Narendra Modi's financial inclusion scheme, the Jan Dhan Yojana. The UN report on India and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the central government has cut the budget for social sector schemes and initiated...
More »The twist in the growth story -C Rangarajan
-The Hindu Reforms must be part of a continuing agenda. The basic principle guiding reforms must be to create a competitive environment with a stress on efficiency. In many ways the coming decade will be crucial for India as growth is the answer to many of its socio-economic problems The data on national income released recently give a new twist to India's growth story. The most significant change is with respect to...
More »Dispossession, development and democracy -Michael Levien
-The Hindu While liberalisation's backers are not squeamish in admitting that democracy is an impediment to the free market economic model, farmers who are dispossessed of land argue that they are undercompensated and that the profit of private companies is not a public purpose Since it was passed by Parliament in September 2013, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) has been criticised from...
More »Activists decry budget cuts for MGNREGA
-IANS Civil society activists as well as economists Monday decried the "budget cuts" being made by the government for the rural employment guarantee act. The government seems to have decided to ignore its legal responsibility and is using budget cuts to rapidly dilute and undermine the rural employment act, the activists said at a press conference here. Economist Jayati Ghosh said that MGNREGA funding has not been keeping to its demand based requirements...
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