-The Hindu Business Line The surge in non-farm employment has led to a rural consumption splurge, making listed companies bullish Is rural India languishing in abject misery, or is it on a cheerful spending spree? Today you can get diametrically opposing views on this, depending on where you get your information. If you are an avid follower of news, then you would be firmly in the pessimist camp, having read all about...

-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and Solidarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-Newsclick.in Despite providing capital for an economically and socially disastrous project, World Bank’s International Financial Corporation has claimed immunity from legal action. A fishing community in Kutch, Gujarat, has moved several courts in the United States seeking damages from the International Financial Corporation (IFC). The IFC is the private investment lending arm of the World Bank Group, and is hiding from legal action behind an immunity law. The claims were dismissed by the...

-The Hindu Business Line The Indian wheat situation is turning worrisome, not because of the over-optimistic production estimate released by the Ministry of Agriculture recently, but because of the current price levels that provide no encouragement to farmers. Fraught with possibilities, the wheat may go the pulses way. The policy-makers may soon be forced to impose import restrictions in the form of higher tariffs. Output, prices To start with, no one in the trade...