-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...

-India Spend India's new government has apparently decided to restructure the United Progressive Alliance's flagship anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The scheme confers the right to every rural household to be employed in public works for 100 days per year. There are three reasons why the government wants to reform the NREGA. First, it is considered to be too expensive. Second, the programme is compromised...

-The Business Standard Scheme faces pincer attack with a proposed higher proportion of expenditure on material, reducing the Budget available to pay wages The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) faces a pincer attack under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, with parallel moves promising to shrink and mutate the nature of the scheme. Two of the moves have been revealed - a proposed higher proportion of expenditure on material,...

-CNN-IBN New York: India has performed poorly in removing gender-based disparities, ranking 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum's 2014 gender gap index, scoring below average on parameters like economic participation, educational attainment and health and survival. India's slipped 13 spots from its 2013's ranking of 101 on the Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum. India is part of the 20 worst-performing countries on the labour force participation,...

-TheGoan.net As had been anticipated, on October 18, the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to decontrol the prices of diesel, the most widely-used petroleum product in the country. Riding on an unexpected fall in world prices of crude oil, the government was able to simultaneously announce a sharp fall in consumer prices of diesel by Rs 3.37 per litre (in Delhi). But the decision...