Government proposes to provide basic insurance coverage to an estimated 43 crore unorganized workers Furthering the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s objective of inclusive growth, the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi will discuss ways of bringing India’s unorganized workers under the social security net in its meeting on 29 November. A new NAC working group on social security is working on draft recommendations that will seek to...
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Fixing poverty line at Rs 32 per capita/day doesnt even guarantee a bare subsistence by Raghav Gaiha & Vani S Kulkarni
-The Economic Times The UPA government - especially the Planning Commission - has been taken to task for fixing a poverty line at a level (Rs 32 per capita/day in urban areas) that does not even guarantee a bare subsistence. In the medley of scathing critiques and rebuttals, three strands of arguments seem dominant. One is that the poverty line is utterly unrealistic as a measure of subsistence requirements of food, health...
More »Learning curbs by Abhijit Banerjee
Jawaharlal Nehru did a huge amount for education in India. He gave us the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and much else. Yet, for a man whose birthday is celebrated as Children's Day, he had relatively little to do with primary schooling. The first Five Year Plan allocated just about Rs 12 crore for investment in primary education, out...
More »High spending on medicines, health to push Indians into poverty, says WHO
-The Hindu High spending on medicines and health will push many Indians below the poverty line, the World Health Organisation has cautioned. “Due to the out-of-pocket spending of their income on medicines and healthcare services, about 3.2 per cent of India's population will come below the poverty line,” a senior WHO official said at a meet organised by the Delhi Society for Promotion of Rational Use of Drugs (DSPRUD) and WHO on...
More »FSA set for pre-poll rollout by Subodh Ghildiyal & Nitin Sethi
The National Food Security Act shall be rolled out starting next financial year spread in phases running up to the parliamentary elections, in what could be an attempt to do the loan-waiver trick in 2014. The government has finalized the bill bringing it substantially closer to the National Advisory Council recommendations. The government has resolved most of the issues that had been in contradiction with the NAC advice and intends to...
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