-PSainath.org The revenues foregone in 2013-14 could fund the rural jobs scheme for three decades or the PDS for four and a half years. It was business as usual in 2013-14. Business with a capital B. This year's budget document says we gave away another Rs. 5.32 lakh crores to the corporate needy and the under-nourished rich in that year. Well, it says Rs. 5.72 lakh crores but I'm...
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MDG Report 2014: India among worst performers in poverty reduction, maternal death and sanitation -Moushumi Sharma
-Down to Earth Report shows good progress in areas like poverty alleviation and access to clean water and controlling diseases like TB, Malaria The United Nations (UN) released this week the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report, 2014. The report, launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, says that many of the development goals have been met or are within reach by 2015. The report is the latest finding to assess the regional progress towards...
More »On the mythology of social policy -Jean Drèze
-The Hindu India is among the world champions of social underspending. Without enlightened social policies, growth mania is unlikely to deliver more under the new government than it did under the previous one Few people today remember the letter written on August 7, 2013 by Mr. Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In this letter, available on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) website, Mr. Modi criticised...
More »Get over the growth fetish -Ashish Kothari
-The Hindu Business Line Perpetual growth is a piece of nonsense. The focus should be on protecting livelihoods through sustainable means Construct a building, demolish it, reconstruct, break it down again, and go on repeating this meaningless exercise. You will have economic growth, as currently measured. But no net gain in employment during the endless cycle of construction and demolition, no net increase in productive capacity, and no appreciable change in poverty...
More »Poverty estimates trigger debate
-The Telegraph C. Rangarajan today defended his calculation that three out of 10 in India are poor, saying the poverty numbers provided by him were not conservative estimates and the methodology was on a par with global standards. The expert group headed by Rangarajan dismissed the Suresh Tendulkar committee's methodology and estimated that the number of poor in India was much higher in 2011-12 at 29.5 per cent of the population. The BJP-led...
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