-The Indian Express To suggest that demonetisation improved rural wages on the basis of rise in income of some workers is misleading. It halted the recovery of the rural economy, which had begun after the 2016 monsoon. There is now a consensus that the economy has been slowing down and is headed for a hard landing. Many who matter have spoken out and as Yashwant Sinha points out (‘I need to speak...

-The Indian Express With the scheme floundering, the Centre is now planning to shift focus to district-level schemes to yield better results in the short-term for its skilling initiative. The government’s flagship skilling scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), is struggling to achieve end-results. Data for the PMKVY scheme until the first week of July 2017 reveals that out of a total 30.67 lakh candidates who had been trained or...

  Protesting social activists at Jantar Mantar (Delhi), who are fighting for better working conditions of MGNREGA workers, have recently shot off two demand letters – one addressed to the Finance Minister of India and the other to the Secretary of Department of Rural Development at the MoRD. The letter addressed to the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley, dated 13 September, 2017, has been signed by eminent activists including Nikhil Dey,...

-The Hindu Business Line Concerns flagged over delay in wages, absence of grievance redressal New Delhi: Citing cases of Aadhaar linkage with wrong accounts, delayed and inadequate wages, especially to thousands of women, preparation of muster rolls in English and centralisation of the programme, workers and organisations from across the country are on dharna in Delhi to reaffirm their “legal entitlements’ under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). “Even based...

-Scroll.in JNU professor Himanshu says the economic slowdown is not the result of a one-off event like demonetisation, the slump began almost two years ago. The economy is in a trough. The first quarter of 2017-2018 saw the growth of gross domestic product (the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a year) drop to 5.7% from 7.9% in the corresponding period last year – the...