The United Progressive Alliance’s flagship scheme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), could have saved the day for India when the world fought against rising job losses on account of century’s worst ever recession , says a report by the International Labour Organisation. “There has been much progress in extending social protection through NREGA, which helped in maintaining levels of consumption and poverty,” the report on Global Employment Trends 2010...

Activists realise it takes a fight to translate democracy from thin paper to thick action In the winter of 1997, advocate Ashok Agarwal filed a petition in the Supreme Court opposing the nearly 400 per cent hike in school fees. This was the year the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations were implemented and the salaries of teachers shot up. Parents trying to cope with the overall price rise were suddenly hit by...

The Planning Commission, the country’s apex planning body, is gradually reconciling to the fact that there would be no large gains in the gross budgetary support (GBS) in budget 2010-11, as the government struggles to reduce fiscal deficit. GBS is the money the Union government allocates to various government programmes through the Union budget. “The major objective of the finance ministry is to bring down the fiscal deficit from 6.8% of...

At least two cases of hunger deaths have been reported from Jabalpur district of MP and Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan in the past few weeks. The two states are run by different political parties-- the BJP and the Congress-- but there is quite a lot common in the victims’ circumstances. Both families were among the poorest in their villages but were not included in the BPL list and both the...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...