-The Telegraph New Delhi: The finance ministry has favoured a proposal to increase the "material" component in projects under the rural job guarantee scheme to facilitate the creation of durable assets. The rural development ministry is, however, having second thoughts, although it had proposed the change in the labour-material ratio from 60-40 to 51-49 for projects under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The scheme, which seeks to provide 100 days...

-Down to Earth The situation of India's farmers has only become grimmer in the past decade, according to the latest National Sample Survey Office report The lot of the embattled Indian farmer only keeps on getting worse with the passage of time. In the last 10 years, the voluminous debt of Indian agricultural households has increased almost four-fold whereas their undersized monthly income from cultivation has increased three-fold. Even the number of...

-Frontline The Left and other national parties protest against the NDA government's attempts to dilute the MGNREGS by limiting its budget and reducing its reach. IN a rare show of solidarity, representatives of several political parties took issue with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its controversial proposal to restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The opposition, which was initially confined to the...

-The Hindu Business Line Questioning the kind of growth model pursued by the Government, civil society activists on Saturday called for a wider public debate on the reported move to curtail social sector spending on schemes such as the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, and for the HIV affected. "Considering the fact that the Government is forecasting a 5.3 per cent growth rate for this year, the social sector cuts in Budget...

-Press Release from Centre for Budget Analysis (CBGA) and Jan Awaaz New Delhi, 29 November 2014: There have been a number of media reports recently around possible cuts in Union Budget allocations for the current fiscal 2014-15 in case of social sector programmes, i.e. reductions in allocations in the Revised Estimates (RE) for 2014-15 as compared to the Budget Estimates (BE) that were made in July this year. This issue deserves...