Despite its seminal success in beginning a process of addressing issues of poverty, starvation and empowering the poor, the MGNREGA needed a general election to breathe life into it. However, the disproportionate influence of the middle class on social sector policy has led to the same set of pre-election prejudices resurfacing. "What use is the MGNREGA to the economy at large?" asks the businessman, one eye fixed apprehensively on the share...

Policy-makers, media and government functionaries have had their say on implementation of the Right to Education Act, but the voices of children in this regard are yet to be heard, Child Rights and You general manager Anita Bala Sharad said here on Thursday. In an effort to factor in the views of children in the discussions on the RTE, CRY held a press conference in which six children from Delhi, Uttar...

In 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has introduced an alternative development discourse in India. ON the full moon night in October, hundreds of people from all over India gathered at Bhilgaon, one of the many tribal villages in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, in the foothills of the Satpura mountain range and on the banks of the river Narmada. The place resounded with jingles, revolutionary folk songs and strains of...

The forthcoming India visit of the US President, Mr Barack Obama, accompanied by Mr Thomas J. Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, and Dr Rajiv Raj Shah, administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is significant in the context of strengthening the Indo-US partnership in the field of agriculture production and sustainable food security. Several related issues will be discussed in Mumbai on November 6 and November 7 where an agriculture...

The Food Security Act was UPA-2’s flagship programme. Jean Dreze, member of the National Advisory Council, has publicly criticised the government. He tells VAIBHAV VATS what’s gone wrong. Much like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the first term of the United Progressive Alliance, the Food Security Act was its most ambitious social welfare programme. Since discussions on the Act in the National Advisory Council began, its provisions...