Sitting on his father’s shoulders, two-year-old Rahul Kumar giggles and tugs on a lock of his father’s hair. A happy, healthy-looking boy, Rahul has already seen much of India. Born in a small village in northern Bihar, he has spent roughly half of his short life in Punjab, where his parents work as seasonal farm labourers. He has spent a few months in his parents’ village. The rest has been spent...

Child mortality great barometer of economic progress ‘Prioritise the marginalised to curb mortality' Children from the poorest communities are three times more likely to die before they reach the age of 5 than those from high income groups, Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation has said. In a global report titled A Fair Chance at Life, the organisation said the policy to lower child mortality in India and elsewhere appeared to focus on...

tung by farmers’ protest over land acquisition for the ongoing Yamuna Expressway project in western Uttar Pradesh, the state government today announced a new policy for land acquisition and rehabilitation of land owners. The policy promises sops, including equity share in the development projects, for land owners. Land acquisition hurdles have put brakes on several ambitious projects of the state government, including the Yamuna Expressway, international airport in Kushinagar district and Lucknow...

The Uttar Pradesh government today scrapped the project for a township near Aligarh and Chief Minister Mayawati unveiled a new policy for rehabilitation of farmers, saying her “government and party were totally against forceful acquisition of farmers’ land”. Under the new policy, there will be provision of annuity for 33 years to a farmer whose land is acquired. This will be in addition to the compensation for the acquired land. The...

Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the landmark National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (later rechristened the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA). At a time when the country is debating the contours of similar landmark legislation for food security (the National Food Security Act), it is time to evaluate the working of MGNREGA, initially implemented in 200 of the country’s poorest districts and expanded to all...