The government will soon have to decide on the proposal of direct cash payments in lieu of food subsidy as a key committee of Parliament has asked the ministries concerned to decide quickly on the issue. This cash payment through smart cards is increasingly being seen as an option to prevent leakage in the public distribution system (PDS), and certain variants of the system are already being experimented with by...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 241
MoRD report raps state on NREGA fund utilisation
The poor utilization of funds meant for rural development continues unabated in Orissa, especially in the backward districts of the state. The pointer to this fact is the gross under-utilization of the funds under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MG-NREGA) in Kalahandi, one of the poorest districts in the state and the country. Out of the total available fund of Rs 56.6 crore for the district under MG-NREGA including the...
More »Biometric cards to NREGA workers on anvil
In an innovative move, biometric cards will be given to those working under NREGA to bring more transparency in the implementation of the Centre's employment guarantee programme, facing complaints of gross irregularities and malpractices in many parts of the country. A decision to prepare biometric database of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA workers "within 12 months" has recently been taken by the Rural Development Ministry here in a meeting which was also...
More »Keeping The Poor Alive by Dipankar Gupta
Poverty attracts two kinds of policy interventions. The first hopes to eradicate it and the second wants to keep the poor alive. In India, our prime effort has always been, right from the days of antodaya, to somehow keep the poor ticking, even at the lowest levels of subsistence. The NREGA scheme saves the impoverished from starvation on a six-monthly basis. We see the same mindset at work in the...
More »Now, a farmers’ suicide SENSEX by Sadiq Naqvi
Nearly 2 lakh farmers committed suicide in India since 1997. The share of big five states accounted for 1,22,823 suicides in this 12 year period. The data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau points out that 16,196 farmers in India ended their life in 2008. K Nagaraj, an economist, in his report Farmers' suicides in India: Magnitude, Trends and Spatial Patterns, says, "The title to land was taken as the...
More »
