-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated August 3, 2022 500+ NREGA workers from across 15 states gathered in Jantar Mantar for the second day of the dharna today. Workers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka gave testimonies about the hardships they have faced owing to persistent delays in wage payments, on how they did not get work when they demanded it, and about how no compensation...
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Interim Report of the Fact Finding Team Investigating the Stoppage of MGNREGA Wages in West Bengal
-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated 28 July 2022 Based on the findings NREGA Sangharsh Morcha put forth the following demands: 1. All the documents pertaining to correspondence between the Central Government and the State Government on MGNREGA since 2019, including the reports of central team visits and action taken, should be made public. 2. The Labour Budget for West Bengal for the FY 2022-23 has to be approved immediately by the...
More »How Aadhaar authentication is helping dealers siphon off food rations in Jharkhand -Siraj Dutta
-Scroll.in A welfare scheme is not the space for technological experiments. In a state with poor nutrition, the government should act against corruption and exclusion. Ration dealers were siphoning off more than half of the grain entitlement of ration cardholders. That is what residents of several villages in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district noted at a recent public hearing on the functioning of the public distribution system in the area. The statements of participants...
More »The selfishness and graft of the rich drive inequality -Aashi Gupta, Vani S Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
-The Hindu The central argument of Almåsa et al., that this is seen in countries with weak institutions, is corroborated in India G.K. Chesterton, the writer, asserted in The Flying Inn (1914): “The rich are the scum of the earth in every country”. Perhaps not all but many. Our contention is that their selfishness, criminality and corruption aggravate inequality. Much experimental evidence corroborates this hypothesis. Some insights A particularly compelling case for ‘Selfish Rich Inequality’...
More »A Tale of Trade-offs: The Anatomy of the Direct Benefit Transfers System -Aarushi Gupta and Siraj Hussain
-TheWire.in While the system was rightly designed to eliminate ghost beneficiaries, the impact of exclusion errors needs to be professionally and independently evaluated in detail. The direct benefit transfer (DBT) system has come to dominate the discourse on public service delivery in India. The existing rhetoric around its efficacy being one of anti-corruption, cost efficiency, and elimination of middlemen. Payments under DBT are made to low-income households using an elaborate, digitised system...
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