-The Financial Express What's clear is it has helped few in its current form Activists have come down heavily on rural development minister Nitin Gadkari for attempting to restructure the MGNREGA by, among others, changing the mandatory amount reserved for labour; the number of districts that the scheme is to be used for is also to be reduced to just the needy ones. This has been done, the activists argue, to help...

-NDTV Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received a sharp letter from 28 leading economists who say they fear his government is trying to dilute the rural jobs guarantee scheme brought in by the previous UPA government. "We are writing to express our deep concern about the future of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act for NREGA," the letter said. (Read the full text of the letter) "It is alarming to hear of multiple...

-The Times of India PATIALA (Punjab): Even as Haryana is going to elections amid political parties' claims about development, a recently published study in a reputed economic journal has revealed that over 80% farmers in the state are reeling under debt. The study also exposed that nearly a same number of farmers are living below poverty line if one goes by the World Bank's definition of "moderate poverty", which means an earning...

-The Hindu NSSO urged to use time-use surveys to ascertain homemakers' economically productive activity Close to two out of every three Indian women are, in their prime working years, primarily engaged in unpaid housework, new NSSO data shows. This phenomenon, on the rise over the last decade, is least common in the southern and north-eastern States and most common in the northern States, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in particular. In data released on...

-The Hindu Chennai: Several leading economists have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act amid apprehensions that the government might restrict the programme and not offer it adequate support. In a letter to Mr. Modi, Dilip Abreu, Pranab Bardhan, V. Bhaskar, Ashwini Deshpande, Jean Dreze, Maitreesh Ghatak, Jayati Ghosh, Dilip Mookherjee, R. Nagaraj, Debraj Ray and others argued that despite numerous hurdles,...