Remember Arjun Sengupta Committee Report? It’s the same report which put paid to government’s shifting poverty estimates by asserting that almost 80% Indian survive on less than Rs 20 per day. Known as the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the report has gone missing from the public domain. The official website of NCEUS is no more working: http://nceus.gov.in, raising doubts regarding someone, somewhere trying to hide...

-The Hindu Saving the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) — the centrepiece of UPA-I’s achievements in the social welfare sector — from its many critics in government and the media who view it as a drain on the exchequer will head the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC)’s agenda in the coming months. At a meeting of the reconstituted NAC on Friday, its members discussed the role a re-energised...

The Sonia-Gandhi led National Advisory Council is pushing to amend the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 to make it more inclusive and include a comprehensive social security package. The council, which met last month, pitched for a security package that would contain health insurance, maternity assistance, a life-cum-disability insurance scheme and a pension plan that it proposed should be provided through a single window backed by an inter-ministerial committee consisting...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has released draft recommendations for a social security package for the country’s unorganized sector, which envisages providing life, disability and health cover, maternity benefits and old-age pension to workers. NAC, in a draft released on 7 March, suggested that the different welfare schemes being run by the ministries of women and child development, health and family welfare, finance and labour and employment should be...

The hunger and malnutrition situation in the country has shown marginal improvement, according to the HUNGaMA report. ONE area that has always bothered policymakers in a growth-obsessed economy is the state of the social sector, in particular figures indicating the numbers of people going hungry or are homeless and children who are out of school, the poor nutritional status of women and children, and the high infant and maternal mortality rates....