It was in 2009, the Central Government directed the state governments to set up offices of Ombudsman to ensure transparency and accountability in implementation of the NREGA Act. Ramesh said he wanted to "build a system for a tighter financial accountability" in implementation of all the flagship programmes of the Ministry including NREGA, PMGSY, NRLM etc and would consult Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai in this regard on...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 2877
Poverty rate drops, rural wages up during six years of UPA rule by Devika Banerji & Rishi Shah
Finally, there's some good news for the United Progressive Alliance government. Consumption numbers for the past six years show that real incomes have grown much faster under the Congress-led coalition than during the National Democratic Alliance era. What's more, poverty is trending down and rural wages are growing smartly. The 2009-10 survey by the National Statistical Survey Organisation (NSSO) shows real spending by each person in rural India rose 6.3%...
More »Who will watch the watchmen? by Minhaz Merchant
The audited balance sheets of the six largest political parties in India are hard to get and harder to decipher: they hide more than they reveal but are nonetheless worth close examination. Between them, the Congress, BJP, BSP, SP, NCP and CPM reported total income of Rs 1,046.76 crore for the year ending March 31, 2009. That was the year in which most of the funds for the 2009 Lok...
More »Challenging the poverty dimension of inflation by Madan Sabnavis
A perverse, yet novel reason put forward to explain high inflation is that the poor are eating more as they are becoming less poor. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been extolled for being responsible for higher consumption, which in a way is a vindication of high inflation. The extended logic used here is that if the poor are eating more and we are paying high...
More »A day at the vineyards by P Sainath
Some of that legendary ‘Banarasi pan' could have begun its journey from Gujjari Mohanty's vineyard in Govindpur, Orissa. “I've sold our leaves in Benares [Varanasi] myself,” says her son Sanatan. As have many of their neighbours. “Our leaves are high-quality and greatly valued.” The betel leaf, though, is not just about pan. It is also valued for medicinal qualities as a digestive, for the antiseptic nature of its oil, and...
More »
