-The Hindu The programme reduced poverty by up to 32 per cent and prevented 14 million people from falling into poverty. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) reduced poverty by up to a third and gave a large number of women their first opportunity to earn cash income, a new research has found. Officials from the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-The Hindu A study shows that Indians are not immune to health consequences of smoking and that smokers have a higher death rate than non-smokers. Recently, a parliamentary committee declined to extend the size of health warnings on cigarette packets due to lack of independent evidence on the health impacts of smoking on the Indian population. A longitudinal study conducted by the National Council of Applied Economics (NCAER) and University of Maryland shows that in...

-Economic and Political Weekly Direct benefi t transfers in the form of cash cannot replace the supply of food through the public distribution system. Though it is claimed otherwise, DBT does not address the problems of identifying the poor ("targeting") and DBT in place of the PDS will expose the vulnerable to additional price fluctuation. Further, if the PDS is dismantled, there will also be no need or incentive for procurement...

-The Hindu While the rates of sexual violence in India - both reported in official statistics and unreported on the basis of household surveys - are towards the lower end of the global spectrum, data on women's autonomy in India indicate that there is a hidden emergency Having opened up a fresh conversation about the situation of women since the December 16, 2012 gang rape, has India done enough to address the...