-The Indian Express Earlier this month, the ministry of finance announced that over 50 million new bank accounts have been opened and 17 million debit cards issued since the launch of a bold new plan to grant financial access to the poor. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced this initiative, called the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), in a speech in August. Its ultimate goal is to reach 150 million unbanked...
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Government mulls to rope in land resources, social forestry into revamped MGNREGA -Yogima Sharma
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government plans to rope in various departments and ministries such as agriculture, land resources, horticulture and social forestry to create bigger and more durable assets under the rural job guarantee scheme, going ahead with its plans to revamp the national programme. "Considering the capacity constraint at the gram panchayat level, which is the main implementing agency for allocating works under the scheme, we are considering to...
More »Of Millstones, Milestones & Millionaires -P Sainath and Ananya Mukherjee
-GRIST Media If hard work and enterprise inevitably made you prosperous, every rural woman would be a millionaire. These women have borne the brunt of the radical, often brutal transformation of rural India these past two decades. Our writers examine the hardships they continue to face as well as their remarkable vision to solve some of the greatest problems of our times such as food security, environmental justice and developing a...
More »Man behind sugarcane ‘revolution’ in U’khand -Kautilya Singh
-The Times of India Haridwar: The journey of a thousand miles, they say, starts with a single step. Rahul Kumar should know. The 29-year-old took the first step, quit his job in a pesticide firm and returned to his roots with a desire to do something for his village. Today, Kumar's wish has come true. With the innovative farming practices that he ushered in at his village Liberhedi near Haridwar, life...
More »Gadkari ministry writes note trashing NREG: ‘purely partisan plan’ -Ruhi Tewari
-The Indian Express In a damning criticism of the UPA government's flagship rural job guarantee scheme, the Rural Development Ministry has said the scheme was reduced to "yet another government programme exploited for pure partisan purpose" and through which "participating agencies and individuals" seek "personal benefit". An internal note prepared by the office of the Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari has claimed MGNREGA has "earned quite a bad name" due to a...
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