Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...
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Enrolment in primary schools plunges 2.6 million in 2 years by Hemali Chhapia
It is a lesson in misplaced enthusiasm. While the Centre has been busy tom-tomming its efforts to send more children to school, enrolment in primary classes across the country has, in actuality, dropped since 2007. Between 2008-09 and 2009-10, enrolment in classes I to IV in Indian schools dropped by over 2.6 million. The biggest setback was witnessed in Uttar Pradesh, where admissions plummeted by over a million in the last...
More »A Dark Lining To The Shine by Neelabh Mishra
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar recently alleged that Monsanto, the Union environment ministry’s genetic engineering approval committee (GEAC) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) had colluded to start trials of genetically modified maize in Bihar before clearance from the environment ministry and the state government. The charge is significant: Nitish says ICAR’s experimental farms in Bihar did not maintain the stipulated “isolation distance” from normal farmland, meant to...
More »How Pranab squared the deficit hole by AK Bhattacharya
Just reclassified Rs 1.46 lakh crore of spending as capital investment. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget for 2011-12 seems to have used a new accounting system to make a virtue of necessity. Committed to provide funds to run the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS, Mukherjee has transferred the entire financial allocation for the scheme under a head that will now help him take credit for a reduced effective...
More »Food Security Bill: media can help
Two key issues Budget-2011 is seen as having failed to address are inflation and mass hunger. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech that the long-promised National Food Security Bill would be moved in Parliament “during the course of this year” but failed to make any financial allocation to back up this statement. Against the backdrop of fresh warnings by experts that the outlook is grim given the...
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