-The Indian Express At a time when the NDA government's moves to prune spending on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and to limit its scope has brought the focus back on the gaps in the scheme's implementation, data with the Ministry of Rural Development show over 70 per cent wages have not been paid on time under the scheme so far this financial year. As per a presentation made...
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The love for sons and appropriate attire -Megan N Reed & Devesh Kapur
-The Hindu Although urban Indians are slowly showing more openness in their attitudes towards women's attire, this is not the case when it comes to the issue of son preference As one of the world's most socially heterogeneous societies, building solidarity across social groups has been a singular challenge in India. Social bias in India is pervasive across a range of key cleavages - whether caste or class, region or religion. In this...
More »Doubts over Maharashtra's Nutritional Progress?
The results of the District Level Household and Facility Survey-4 for the year 2012-13, commonly known as DLHS-4, are out and it shows that among the 18 states and 3 UTs, the percentage of moderate wasting for children below 5 years is highest among Maharashtra (i.e. 34.1%). Similarly, in case of severe wasting and moderate underweight, the situation is worst in Maharashtra as compared to the rest (Please check the...
More »Let’s remake the classroom -Rukmini Banerji and Esther Duflo
-The Indian Express The 10th edition of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham, released last week, shows that over the last decade, basic learning levels for children in elementary school in India have remained low. Only about half of Class V children in rural India can read a simple Class II level text, and a similar proportion can do a two-digit subtraction problem with borrowing. While there are...
More »UPA’s food Act was more about ‘vote security’: FCI revamp panel chief -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express The National Food Security Act (NFSA) passed during the previous UPA regime's tenure was more about "vote security" than "food security", according to Shanta Kumar, BJP MP and chairman of the high level committee on Restructuring the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Defending his committee's recommendation to bring down the coverage of the NFSA from 67 per cent to around 40 per cent of the country's population, Kumar claimed...
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