The transport sector is important for the smooth functioning of an economy. The supply chains for various products and by-products (both domestically as well as internationally) can work efficiently only if the transportation of raw materials and inputs, and final goods and commodities takes place without disruption. Due to economic growth, India’s annual CO2 (i.e., carbon dioxide) emission has expanded from 1.19 billion tonnes in 2005 to 2.44 billion tonnes...
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Forget minimum wages, MGNREGA workers not even receiving notified wages in many states
Every year in the month of either February or March, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) announces the notified MGNREGA wage rates (i.e., notified daily wage rates for MGNREGA workers) for various states and Union Territories (UTs) for the upcoming financial year. The MGNREGA rates are notified every year based on the increase in Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL). Like the previous years, in 2021 too, experts and civil...
More »Samyukta Kisan Morcha reiterates the demand for legally guaranteed MSP for crops
-Press release by Samyukta Kisan Morcha dated 17th April, 2022 On the call of Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the MSP Guarantee Week was observed from April 11th to 17th by the farmers across the country — Protests, demonstrations, meets, conventions, seminars and other programs were held across the country Despite SKM’s repeated requests for clarifications regarding the committee on MSP, vis-à-vis its composition, its mandate, its tenure, and its Terms of Reference, the...
More »Reality is stranger than the fad for online education -- most schools lack IT-infrastructure
Online teaching was perhaps the most preferred mode (of the policymakers) for imparting education to school children in the last two years when schools faced closures thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was promoted by both the Central and State Governments when mobility almost came to a standstill (or got restricted in comparison to normal times) during the last two years. However, various studies (a list of those studies is...
More »Real wage rates of the rural workers hardly increased during the last 6 years
In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...
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