Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
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There’s no one to fill Mahalanobis’s shoes -Atanu Biswas
-The Hindu India needs a top statistician to frame data-based policies for welfare and development In Poverty and Famines (1981), Amartya Sen argued that poor distribution of food, wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding were important reasons for the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, while Madhusree Mukerjee, in her 2010 book, Churchill’s Secret War, wrote of the role of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his wartime Cabinet’s decisions and “denial policy”...
More »Rolling back the induced livelihood shock -Sumit Mazumdar and Indranil
-The Hindu Specific policy measures can reverse the lockdown-created trauma and stop it from snowballing into chronic Poverty For most regions across the country, the long lockdown has just got over. As the “unlocking” begins, it is becoming increasingly apparent how the Indian state had chosen its sides and revealed its elitist bias during one of the most stringently enforced lockdowns worldwide. Several news reports and surveys on the plight of India’s...
More »Are We Entering a New Phase of Increasing Hunger? -Bharat Dogra
-TheWire.in Warnings sound by the UN and its organs point to a food crisis which is worse than any seen in the last 50 years. On June 9, the United Nations warned that the world today faces a food crisis which is worse than any seen in the last 50 years. Secretary general Antonio Guterres said that nearly 50 million people risk falling into extreme Poverty due to the pandemic. More specifically...
More »Dr. Himanshu. associate professor at JNU and a visiting fellow at Centre de Sciences Humaines, interviewed by Shreehari Paliath (IndiaSpend.com)
-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: As India deals with growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the economic ramifications of the resultant lockdowns, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has made a slew of announcements and promulgated ordinances to revive the economy, including the agriculture sector. It brought in the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion & Facilitation) Ordinance 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020, and amended the...
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