-The Economic Times For one who had worked so closely to frame the world's largest job guarantee programme, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it's not easy to see it succumb to pressure. It's no wonder that economist-cum-activist Jean Dreze will raise his voice against this, along with eminent academics such as Pranab Bardhan and Maitreesh Ghatak. Dreze says corruption related to NREGA and leakages - its...

-Livemint The statistics showed that the proportion of underweight children had fallen 12.8 percentage points since 2005 to 30.7% In its latest Global Hunger Index report released last month, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published new statistics on India's child malnutrition rates, which showed a dramatic decline in the proportion of underweight children. The statistics, based on a survey conducted by the ministry of women and child development and the...

-PTI Washington: Six out of ten men in India have acted violently against their wives or partners at some point of time, with those facing economic distress more likely to perpetrate violence, says a new study highlighting prevalence of intimate partner abuse released on Monday. The study titled Masculinity, Intimate Partner Violence and Son Preference in India by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Washington-based International Centre for Research on Women...

-The Times of India Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hereafter BP, have argued for phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in favour of cash transfers ("Rural Inefficiency Act", ToI, 23 October). It's surprising-and amusing-that two eminent economists have chosen to make a case based on prior beliefs and some sophomoric wordplay ('mis'leading economists), rather than on the available evidence. A survey by one of us of the empirical literature...

-The Times of India BAREILLY: Two government departments have sparked off a war of words after one of them said as per its survey only 1,600 children were out of school in the district, while another department rubbished this saying more than 40,000 had no access to education. As per the survey conducted by the basic education department, officials said that 1,692 children had not been enrolled in schools so far. However, the...