-Down to Earth Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of farmers...
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Nutrition and the Budget's fine print -Jayashree B and R Gopinath
-The Hindu While there are well-equipped schemes to address malnutrition, funding and policy gaps are problem areas A few months ago, the Global Hunger Index, reported that India suffers from “serious” hunger, ranked 102 out of 117 countries, and that just a tenth of children between six to 23 months are fed a minimum acceptable diet. The urgency around nutrition was reflected in the Union Finance Minister’s Budget speech, as she referred...
More »Union budget 'moves away' from Right to Education, 1.3 lakh schools closed down -Aparajita Sharma
-Counterview.net It was a shocking reply by the Union human resource development minister to a question raised in Parliament on closure of schools in a country where lakhs of children are still out of school. On December 2, the minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, told Lok Sabha that the NITI Aayog’s education project, Sath-E, has led to 35,996 schools of different levels being merged in Madhya Pradesh, 4,312 in Jharkhand and 1,803...
More »Making agriculture future ready: How Modi's 'Gram Sadak' scheme is helping
-Financial Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road building scheme for rural India could also hold a key towards uplifting farm economy. FM in her budget announcement said that the centre will “encourage” state governments if they implement reforms for agriculture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road building scheme for rural India could also hold a key towards uplifting farm economy. Under the third phase of PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana), the government...
More »A brief exercise in not taking the Economic Survey 2020 seriously -S Subramanian
-TheWire.in This survey was about wealth and entrepreneurship and free markets and privatisation, not about poverty or inequality or public employment schemes. This is a quick summary review of the latest Economic Survey (2019-20). I have to admit that this quickly-written assessment is a product of an equally quickly-read Survey. If I have not quite pored over it, it is because I found no evidence in the Survey to suggest that it...
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