The finance minister’s budget includes a big boost in spending on reducing malnutrition, clearly the priority among the social services programs of the Congress party-led government. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will increase spending on malnutrition programs by 58% in fiscal 2012-13 to 158 billion rupees, or about $3 billion. Included in this new spending is a plan to reorganize the Integrated Child Development Services, the central government-led initiative that has...
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Is this the end of the road for MGNREGA?-Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
In an interview with Mint in February, Jairam Ramesh, minister of rural development, was asked whether the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) would be rolled back in the upcoming budget as part of a plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. “How can we roll back a demand-driven programme?” Ramesh had replied. But that is precisely what seems to have happened. On Friday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced a...
More »'Rural jobs scheme should have off period during agriculture season'
-IANS States should be allowed to declare an off period for the rural jobs scheme MGNREGA during peak agricultural season, says Sumitra Mahajan, chief of a parliamentary panel on rural development. She also believes extending the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to urban areas - as suggested by the Economic Survey last week - is not practicable unless the scheme is made to include semi-skilled work apart from manual...
More »Vodafone-like transactions should yield tax and the law must make that clear
-The Economic Times The Budget's retrospective clarification of what is meant by transfer of assets in India entailing a capital gains tax payment is controversial but necessary and unavoidable. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Vodafone and against the government in the company's disputation of a capital gains tax claim in its acquisition of Hutch-Essar. This is on ground that might be legally firm but is quicksand for logic. The Court...
More »Cheap generics no panacea for India's poorest
-Reuters Cheap generic drugs were meant to change the life of Nandakhu Nissar, whose mouth is swollen by a cancerous tumour. But the cashless and hungry 55-year-old sleeps on a pavement staring up at the windows of Mumbai's biggest cancer hospital. "What is a generic drug?" shrugs Nissar, who has travelled over 1,500 kms (900 miles) from his home in the hope of treatment. "I have borrowed money from friends and relatives...
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