-The Hindu The ‘development’ discourse serves the same purpose as the colonial apparatus but without the bad press. After 67 years of failing to eliminate deprivation in India, is it time to look for new ideas? The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, which hit the headlines earlier this month, tells us that half the households in rural India are landless, dependant on casual manual labour, and live in deprivation. By suggesting...
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In India, no toilets for women -Arindam Chakrabarti
-The Hindu A young girl in Jharkhand committed suicide because her father refused to build a toilet for her. When will the Indian male’s insensitivity to women’s basic needs change? Indian men urgently need basic ethical education. Since the 19th century, women’s education has been a progressive obsession with enlightened Indian social reformers. Although much remains to be done to get anywhere close to equal access to education for the genders, there...
More »Chuck the BPL card -Mihir Shah
-The Indian Express SECC opens the door to step away from the poverty line as a criterion for government benefits. The Government of India has just released data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. It is perhaps the most ambitious exercise of this kind ever conducted in human history. The SECC 2011 has three parts: census of rural India, conducted by the Union ministry of rural development (MoRD), census...
More »SECC not irrelevant just yet -Rukmini S
-The Hindu Although the SECC’s objectives are not likely to be met, it is a big step towards providing accurate information on the well-being of the people. The release of data for rural households from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is only the latest step in India’s tortured history of trying to count its poor. The idea behind the SECC was technocratic. Commissioned by the United Progressive Alliance in 2011,...
More »The digging-holes myth -Jean Dreze
-The Indian Express The view of MGNREGA as a makeshift work programme is far off the mark. Few social programmes in India are more resented by the corporate sector than the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This is easy to understand, considering that one of the primary aims of the MGNREGA is to empower workers and reduce their dependence on private employers. Naturally, employers see this as a threat...
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