-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Indian Express Lack of adequate staff, payment delays undermine MGNREGA in a drought-hit district The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has completed 10 years and the NDA government recently claimed that its rule has resulted in a “transformation” in the implementation of the scheme. The veracity of the claim is highly questionable as we observe a wide lacuna in its implementation in several places. Here, we focus...

-The Indian Express Jaitley says UPA govt left scheme in ‘pitiable’ state, Manmohan says Modi govt killed its ‘soul and spirit’ The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) completed 10 years on Tuesday, sparking a political slugfest as both the Congress and the BJP rushed to take credit for its “success”. While Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Narendra Modi government had given the scheme, allegedly in a “pitiable” state...

-The Hindu Gondi is the lingua franca of the Maoist movement today, but All India Radio does not broadcast even a single new bulletin in the language. One winter morning, in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh, I was watching a group of Adivasi kids peering into their mobile phones. The early morning sun was mellow, and they were so engrossed that they did not notice me drawing near. “We are doing Bultoo...

-The Indian Express A renewed funding squeeze may undermine MGNREGA’s recent revival, fear civil society activists. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme which guarantees 100 days of wage employment per year to rural households, may have staged a revival in the last two quarters after showing a declining trend in person-days generation during the first year of the Narendra Modi government. But the turnaround could well be temporary,...