-The Hindu Dalit groups here have demanded an additional budget allocation for the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan this year to compensate for the loss of Rs.8,685.04 crore caused by “inadequate provisions” made in the State budgets during the past five successive years. The allocation should be made in proportion to the population of Dalits enumerated in the 2011 Census. A delegation of Dalit activists met Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot here with the request...

Worried at the prospect of having to match the arbitrary minimum wage rate fixed by the states, the central government is considering changes in the law to specify a separate wage norms for its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme that is undergoing a complete makeover under minister Jairam Ramesh.  The centre has already contested in the Supreme Court a Karnataka High Court interim order directing it to align wage rates under...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

-The Economic Times   In 2007, 27-year-old Kaushalendra from Bihar shunned the placement frenzy, which would see many of his colleagues earn fat salaries, in favour of a more homespun alternative: Selling fresh vegetables on a push cart to residents of his hometown Nalanda.  Putting together whatever money he had, Kaushalendra began the venture in 2008 and soon started doing well. People didn't mind paying a little more if they saw value in...

-The Hindu   Prompt payment through bank; corruption eliminated; in fact, some workers have a saving They are all manual workers earning Rs. 100 daily under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and some of them have a bank balance — no matter how small — made possible because of their financial inclusion and the introduction of technology that links their accounts biometrically through the Aadhaar number. As the new system ensures...