-Livemint.com MGNREGS could alleviate rural distress but, in its current form, its overall impact on the rural economy is limited in scope With rural distress deepening across India and private consumption growing anaemically, calls for ramping up the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), are growing louder ahead of the upcoming budget. Proponents of MGNREGS believe that it may be the only ammunition in the government’s arsenal to fight rural...

-United Nations News Around half a billion people work fewer paid hours than they would like, or are not getting enough access to paid work, shows a study published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Monday, which also forecasts that unemployment will rise by about 2.5 million this year. After nine years of relatively stable global unemployment, the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2020 puts the rising jobless numbers down...

-The Hindu Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee says the deficit numbers are a bit imaginary, not a big deal if breached Mumbai: Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has said that he would not back fiscal tightening in the current economic environment. Prof. Banerjee added that the real constraint to the state of education in the country in the current climate of economic slowdown was not lack of money, but the lack of attention paid to...

-Hindustan Times A reply under the Right to Information Act, recently, disclosed that “Lokpal is provisionally operating from the Ashoka Hotel. In the absence of a permanent office in the national capital, the country’s apex anti-corruption body, Lokpal, set up to look into complaints against public servants, pays a monthly rent of Rs 50 lakh to government-owned Hotel Ashoka for the office space it occupies in the five-star luxury hotel. A reply...

-The Hindu The decision was taken during a tripartite meeting at Kolkata’s New Secretariat Building where representatives of the workers’ union and planters’ association met Labour Minister Moloy Ghatak. Kolkata: The West Bengal government and the Tea Planters’ Association of Darjeeling hills on Friday agreed to the demand of tea garden workers across 87 gardens in the Darjeeling hills for a 20% bonus. The decision was taken during a tripartite meeting at...