-Scroll.in Possibly to woo voters, the state government started the Hausla Poshan Yojana last year that lasted only two months. On a cold January morning in Ayadhnagar village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur district, a group of 10 children huddled around a bonfire outside their anganwadi centre. Despite the warmth of the fire, they shivered. The bare and dusty centre did not have mats for them to sit on and some of...

-TheWire.in Farmer suicides and hunger deaths plague flagship village of SP government. “Have you heard of kangaali mein aata geela? That is our situation,”says Sugha Singh as he sits outside Balwan Singh’s house along with other village men under the tree on a warm February afternoon. He is referring to an old Hindi idiom which means getting into more hardships one after another. They are mourning the death of Munni Devi, 78,...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation shows India’s social welfare measures like MGNREGS to be worryingly patchy Following the announcement of demonetisation, reports of its devastating impact on informal sector workers, farmers and migrants began to pour in from across the country. Seeking evidence on two questions — do social security measures work in the face of such an economic shock, and do these programmes themselves face disruption because of demonetisation — we conducted...

-The Hindu Business Line They rue voting for BJP in the 2014 LS polls, and swear by Mayawati’s BSP now Jalaun (Uttar Pradesh): The reverse migration triggered by demonetisation has possibly reversed the BJP’s political fortunes in this backward and poverty-stricken region of Bundelkhand. Coupled with agrarian distress, demonetisation-induced reverse migration is pushing voters away from the BJP in the ongoing elections. While the SP-Congress alliance is the frontrunner for upper caste voters,...

-The Times of India Going online was supposed to clean up and smoothen functioning of government schemes like the rural job guarantee scheme MGNREGS. But experience from Jharkhand's tribal districts shows that besides the chronic lack of connectivity, a brand new system of corruption has emerged. And, instead of more transparency, villagers with no knowledge of the electronic way of life are running blindly from pillar to post. Too many flip-flops...