-The Indian Express There is evidence to suggest that with a few modifications, MGNREGA can dent poverty. There are few government programmes that excite as much passion as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). For advocates, it is a lifeline for the rural poor. For critics, it is a programme that distorts labour markets and does far more harm than good. In this partisan quicksand, it is hard to...
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Will the JAM Trinity Dismantle the PDS? -Silvia Masiero
-Economic and Political Weekly The platform known as the JAM Trinity (an acronym for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) may enable a shift from the current Public Distribution System, based on price subsidies, to the direct transfer of benefits. However, it is incorrect to argue that JAM technologies will necessarily lead to the demise of the PDS. State-level experiences of computerisation, recounted here, reveal that the same technologies can...
More »They don’t go to the field -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express There is a worrying dearth of Indian economists working on agriculture today. In his classic Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, John Kenneth Galbraith observed how the economics profession had a well-defined order of precedence. At the top were the economic theorists and specialists in banking and finance. At the bottom of the hierarchy were agricultural economists. George F. Warren from Cornell University was even worse — a...
More »The pulses crisis: why reinvent the wheel? -Roshan Kishore
-Livemint.com The shortfall in pulse production is expected to be around 2 million tonnes this year Under siege over sky-rocketing pulse prices, especially when the crucial Bihar elections are underway, the Centre initially blamed the state governments for the situation at hand for failing to crack down on hoarders. According to news reports, more than 80,000 tonnes of pulses have been recovered in raids across states in the last week or...
More »Dr Imrana Qadeer, public health scholar and professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health (JNU), speaks to Poornima Joshi
-The Hindu Business Line How the Indian State metamorphosed from protector of the poor to facilitator of the private health industry If there is correlation between two incidents of the Central Government announcing cuts in the health budget and dengue patients being refused treatment in Delhi’s private hospitals, it is rarely discussed in the ongoing media debate on the subject. A new collection of researched essays edited by public health scholar Imrana...
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