-Live Mint The scheme represents Rs.2.3 trillion spent on wasteful rural consumption This week marked the eighth anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's key rural intervention, launched in 200 districts initially in February 2006. To the extent that such populist schemes helped raise wages without raising productivity. They have contributed more to inflation than to rural wealth. Worse, such schemes have...
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Compulsion by stealth-R Ramakumar
-The Hindu The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...
More »Unkept promise -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...
More »National rural jobs scheme loses steam in Karnataka, Rajasthan-Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-The Business Standard In 2009-10, number of days a household got employment in a year in rural areas of Rajasthan was about 38, which steadily dropped to 23 in 2012-13 Rajasthan and Karnataka, which used to be stand-out performers of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)'s flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), of late, are showing signs of faltering in terms of execution, raising a question mark on...
More »Education quality worsens under UPA: ASER - Prashant K Nanda
-Live Mint UPA govt hasn't succeeded in improving learning outcomes in India's schools, says the report New Delhi: Despite levying a tax to fund education and enacting a law to ensure access to education for all children between the ages of 6 and 14, the government hasn't succeeded in improving learning outcomes in India's schools, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published on Wednesday. The quality of learning-as measured...
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