Real wages in the hinterland have stagnated despite zooming economy While the economy has zoomed along at an average of 7.2% of GDP in the last decade, real wages in the hinterland have stagnated. You would imagine that after a decade of impressive economic growth averaging around 7.2 per cent, rural populations would be beneficiaries to this story. However, wage patterns considered over the last ten years show that real wages (wages...

More than 2.5 million Americans fell into poverty last year, bringing the total number to its highest in 52 years. After touring food banks across Tennessee, Marcia Wells was not surprised by the latest statistics showing that more Americans are living in poverty today than at any time since the Census Bureau began first publishing the number 52 years ago. In the US, 2.6 million people fell into poverty last year, the...

There are signs of resistance from private schools to the clause in the RTE Act stipulating implementation of 25 per cent reservation. EVER since the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act), 2009, came into effect a little over a year ago, there has been a perceptible sense of insecurity among sections of managements of private, unaided schools, parents of children going to these institutions and, in...

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement have been the fountainhead of enormous destitution of millions of invisible people since Independence. Generations of those sacrificed for ‘development’ are farmers and farm workers, and many are fragile tribal people and forest gatherers. By coercive displacement and dispossession, governments pauperise its poorest people, and its food-growers, so that the ‘nation’ can prosper and grow. Rage at persisting State injustice of coercive displacement frequently spills onto...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...