-The Times of India Of the nearly 25,000 person days of work done under the job guarantee scheme (MNREGA) in Kannapuram gram panchayat in district Kannur, 97% was by women. This seems some kind of a record but Kerala has many such villages -91% work done in 201516 under the jobs scheme was by women. More than good implementation it's a result of the dismal employment situation in a state repeatedly ranked...

Although the focus of erstwhile UPA and the present NDA government has been to achieve higher economic growth by reaping the 'demographic dividend', a recent report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) informs us that a substantial chunk of the population underwent ageing during the last 60 years. The report entitled Elderly in India: Profile and Programmes 2016 from CSO (that comes under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation) shows...

-Livemint.com/ Bloomberg Corruption being rife though, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has boosted agricultural wages and rural-labour market Over the last 10 years in India, perhaps no other law has sparked such sustained debate as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), universally known as ‘Narega.’ Passed by the previous Congress government in February 2006 and upheld by the Narendra Modi administration, it’s given rise to the...

-The Indian Express There is a mounting employment crisis in India. The current growth model, built on large private investments, cannot address the problem. Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan raised many hackles with his demand for affirmative action or job reservations for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates in the private sector. He suggested that “providing quota in private jobs will help cool down anger among SC and STs”, thereby stemming...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...