-The New Indian Express Narendra Modi’s overwhelming win has pushed the burning issues around agrarian distress on the back burner; but once the victory euphoria dies down, these will be pushing for recognition again. A crash in prices of farm produce and the demand for remunerative prices, and waiver of back-breaking loans are some of the issues staring the new government in the face. The interim budget recognised the distress by...
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Under NDA, rural drinking water takes a back seat -Sneha Alexander & Vishnu Padmanabhan
-Livemint.com Since 2014, the NDA has cut funding for rural drinking water and focused more on sanitation, leaving millions without access to safe and assured water Water is central to human sustenance but millions of Indians do not get enough of it. In 2015, 163 million Indians lacked access to clean water near their homes, the highest figure in the world according to WaterAid, a non-governmental organization focusing on global water issues....
More »How a guerrilla campaign made history by pushing mental health into Cong, CPM's election manifestos -Tanmoy Goswami
-The Economic Times A campaign called 'Bridge the Care Gap' has been lobbying political parties to commit to the implementation of the Mental Healthcare Act and the National Mental Health Policy On April 2, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and other senior Congress leaders unveiled the party's manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress website crashed with a huge spike in traffic. Most analyses of the manifesto focused on the usual themes...
More »Callous disdain for the wasted lives of the poor
-The Telegraph The most important implication of underfunding the MGNREGA is that the NDA denies that there is a jobs crisis Given the fact that a significant amount of jobs has been lost by casual rural workers in the recent past, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act gains added significance. It is supposed to provide 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every adult in a household...
More »Is farmer income support a sustainable solution? -Sanjiv Phansalkar
-VillageSquare.in Income support to smallholder farmers is similar to palliative measures like minimum support prices or loan waivers that do not address the problem of an unsustainable population living on a fixed resource base The government in the budget for this year has announced an allocation of Rs 75,000 crore for direct income transfer of Rs 6,000 annually for every farmer who owns less than 2 hectares of land. This amount...
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