Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
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There’s no one to fill Mahalanobis’s shoes -Atanu Biswas
-The Hindu India needs a top statistician to frame data-based policies for welfare and development In Poverty and Famines (1981), Amartya Sen argued that poor distribution of food, wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding were important reasons for the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, while Madhusree Mukerjee, in her 2010 book, Churchill’s Secret War, wrote of the role of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his wartime Cabinet’s decisions and “denial policy”...
More »Virus, outdated census method mar Gujarat’s lion numbers -Jacob Koshy
-The Hindu Efficacy of vaccine for CDV not known, data unavailable An outdated methodology and the true mortality from a virus affecting India’s lions dent the credibility of the Gujarat government’s claims on its lion population. In a press statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted results of the 2020 Asiatic Lion Census that put the number of lions at 674, a 28% rise from...
More »Locust invasions in a number of Indian states have arisen out of climate change induced extreme rainfalls in desert areas
In the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, desert locust swarms have been seen in parts of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh in the second half of May 2020. The recent attacks by desert locust swarms have caused massive crop damage, depletion in the stock of cattle fodder and destruction of green vegetation in these states. As on 25th May, 2020, over half of Rajasthan’s 33 districts were...
More »Recent survey by civil society group show 'access-to-food' situation improves in Jharkhand, although much is required to be done for the poor & marginalised
-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand chapter, dated 26th May, 2020 Following the first round of quick survey of essential facilities in rural areas of Jharkhand that was conducted during the first week of April 2020, a second round of survey was done in the second and third week of May this year by members (called "observers") of the Right to Food Campaign, state chapter. Like the previous one,...
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