-VillageSquare.in Given the complex and varied situations in rural India, the results of the direct benefit transfer method are so far mixed at best and debilitating at worst, as seen in the subsidies for farm equipment and fertilizers Direct benefit transfer (DBT), a system through which government programs transfer funds directly to bank accounts of beneficiaries, is hailed as a major intervention that is expected to cut a whole lot of misdirection...

-The Hindu Our education system has failed to integrate the rural into the larger political community, the nation Rural Mandsaur, where five persons were killed during a demonstration recently, is a prosperous region of western Madhya Pradesh. More than a decade ago, I had the opportunity of spending two days with the children of a private residential school in Mandsaur. At that time, it was the only English-medium residential school. Its vast and...

-The Indian Express The Niti Aayog's report, submitted before the United Nations, acknowledges that anti-poverty programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) helped weaker sections of the society. Vindicating the UPA government’s stand on pulling people out of poverty, India’s Voluntary National Review Report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations has said that sustained growth of 8.3 per cent from 2004-05 to 2011-12,...

-The Hindu Business Line The solution lies in better prices for produce, generating non-farm income, and reducing costs of farming After the Yogi Adityanath government waived farm loans of about ?36,000 crore for UP farmers, pressure has mounted on other States to follow suit. But contrary to common belief, debt waivers aside from possibly guaranteeing electoral victory, do little to alleviate the plight of farmers. Neither do they help kick-start the rural...

Promises are made to be broken. In its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the promise that if it is elected to the Centre, it will then accord a high priority to job creation and opportunities for entrepreneurship, among other things. But latest data on unemployment shared by the BJP MP Shri Bandaru Dattatreya in written form while replying to an unstarred question in the...