Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
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Jean Drèze, development economist and social activist, interviewed by Shreehari Paliath (IndiaSpend.com)
-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: Global economic output is expected to contract by 4.9% in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 lockdown. India announced a lockdown on March 24, 2020, which was extended over two months, and continues in pockets of states depending on the spread of the disease, which has now infected more than half a million people in the country. The lockdown impacted millions of inter-state migrant workers who form the bulwark of India’s...
More »How To Enable MSMEs To Recover From The Lockdown -Shreehari Paliath
-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: In the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic and two months of stringent lockdown, India now faces the crises of unemployment and business closure, particularly in the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSMEs) sector. A new report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) has proposed that MSME recovery can be speeded along by: * Identifying micro, small and...
More »Reverse land use change to prevent zoonoses like COVID-19: UNCCD -Shagun Kapil
-Down to Earth Land use degradation creates ground for zoonotic disease like COVID-19 as the interaction and physical distance between animals and humans gets closer Land use change, which prepares the ground for zoonoses like the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), should be reversed urgently, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has said. Over 70 per cent of all natural, ice-free land in the world is affected by human use, according to...
More »COVID-19: Bracing for agrarian crisis and food insecurity -Manjari Balu
-Down to Earth Distress among marginal farmers and unavailability of food to migrant labourers has been largely ignored in Union government’s economic stimulus Agriculture and allied activities are considered ‘essential’ and officially face no restriction to harvest and supply to the market, even in the middle of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. But an agrarian crisis stemming from systemic failures needs to be considered for immediate policy response. The current distress...
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