Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) completes five years since its launch tomorrow. In order to commemorate the completion of the fifth year of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Ministry Of Rural Development is organizing Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Sammelan on Wednesday, the 2nd February ,2011 . Five years ago on the same day, the scheme was launched from Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh with the objective...
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Kind to cash by Richard Mahapatra
The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash transfer will plug leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...
More »Neoliberal illogic by Prabhat Patnaik
The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....
More »Microcredit in Bangladesh 'helped 10 million'
Microcredit lifted 10 million Bangladeshis out of poverty between 1990 and 2008, according to a report. The work of Grameen Bank and others helped many families to raise their income above $1.25 a day, said the US-based Microcredit Summit Campaign. The study follows recent criticism of microfinance, which works by providing small loans to people to invest in generating their own incomes. Some experts argue the report may have missed the bigger picture. They...
More »Invisible people by R Krishnakumar
Some 10 lakh to 30 lakh migrant labourers take up skilled or semi-skilled work in Kerala. THE State Bank of India has a branch near the Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram, in a by-lane on the avenue leading to the Kowdiar Palace, the residence of the former maharajas of Travancore. It is a cosy little place on the first floor of a nondescript building, and the clientele includes the rich and...
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