--Press release by the National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 29, 2022 An education emergency of unprecedented proportions has severely impacted hundreds of millions of children in India. Prolonged school closures have caused learning deprivation, student dropout, increased child labour, malnutrition, and early marriages that are compromising the future of our country. It is time to open schools and massively increase funding of public education with a clear focus...

-Livemint.com/ HowIndiaLives.com Even as it presses for market reforms in agriculture, the Centre has been actively using the basket of schemes wholly funded by it to widen the social security net for farmers. Expect that to continue in the coming Budget In 2016, the BJP-led government set itself the target to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. An inter-ministerial committee set up to recommend strategies to meet this target highlighted seven sources of...

-Newsclick.in The Narendra Modi government has carried the practice of making low Budgetary Allocations for MGNREGS to its limit. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS was introduced by the United Progressive Alliance-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left, which was supporting that government from outside. The scheme was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum...

-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the lives of vulnerable children towards deep uncertainty resulting from household financial setbacks and school closures. Children who have lost parents or guardians too stare at a bleak present and future. Addressing concerns of their protection necessitates child-sensitive policy measures supported by adequate Budgetary Allocations. This policy brief maps the crises they have been...

-Down to Earth The focus of MGNREGA has, over time, shifted from employment creation to asset creation  The funds allocated in the Union budget 2021-22 for implementing schemes under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) were exhausted within the first half of this financial year. The budgetary provision for 2021-22 was Rs 73,000 crore, of which Rs 79,810 crore has been spent. Many workers didn’t get paid; it may take...