-FactChecker.in/ IndiaSpend Team Mumbai: On completing four years in government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released a slew of infographics based on what it offered as achievements. Two such claims relate to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a 12-year-old rural make-work programme launched in 2006 by the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, led by the Congress party. The BJP–whose leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said the...

-Livemint.com While there are several creditable achievements, it is the deeper structural reforms where expectations from a strong government have not been met Amidst expectations of a magical transformation of the Indian economy, the Narendra Modi government took over the reins in May 2014. During the election campaign, people were led to believe that the Gujarat model of agricultural development, which delivered 8% growth in agriculture during fiscal years 2003-14, would be...

-Frontline.in The women-led climate-resilient farming model created by Swayam Shikshan Prayog in drought-hit Marathwada has yielded encouraging results and is worthy of emulation across the country. “LOOK at our quinoa. It has grown so well,” says a beaming Shailaja Narwade from Masia village near Solapur in interior Maharashtra. Shailaja has planted the traditional South American plant not for consumption but in order to harvest its seeds. “Quinoa seeds are very valuable...

-VillageSquare.in The country’s particularly vulnerable tribal groups, who live mostly in dwindling forests, have not been well served by the government’s administrative machinery, but have slowly been reduced to virtual serfdom Max Weber, the 19thcentury German sociologist, had extolled the virtues of bureaucracy. India used to celebrate its steel frame governing the country for decades, and which continues to rule us till date, though it is unfashionable to sing its virtues any...

-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and Solidarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...