Child rights groups have expressed disappointment over the Union Budget for ignoring the needs of millions of children. A statement issued by Haq, a child rights group, said an initial run-through of the allocations showed a minimal increase for protection of “aam bachcha” and a drop in the allocation for the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) that set the tone for all protection measures. The overall increase in the percentage of the...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

For the first time since the launch of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in the 2005-06 fiscal, the combined plan outlay for the Ministries of HRD and Health has surpassed that of the Department of Rural Development, which administers doles like the NREGS, old age pension and rural housing grants to the poor. The UPA regime has for the first time cut outlay — by about 2 per cent...

This is a collection of 45 select articles written by M.S. Swaminathan over the past 20 years. Arranged in six sections, they cover ‘sustainable development in Indian agriculture', ‘technology and evergreen revolution', ‘sustainable food security', ‘agrarian crisis', ‘WTO and Indian farmers', and ‘shaping India's agricultural destiny'. As Jeffrey Sachs says in his foreword, Swaminathan had “recognised already in the early days of India's green revolution that the new breakthroughs could create...

Poor allocation of funds to key social sectors shows the government’s lacklustre approach to inclusive growth. We are reaching the end of a remarkable fiscal year,” said the finance minister as he rose to present the Union Budget 2011-12. Agreeing with the government that the year gone by presented us with several opportunities and challenges to address critical concerns pertaining to the social sector, the overall sense is that this Budget,...