-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...

-The Hindu We cannot permit gross inequality-linked deprivation to leave its malign signature on the lives of those who are yet to come. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution can be found for the world’s problems. Inequality is the root of social ills. —...

-Huffington Post Of all the arguments that have been raised this turbulent spring in our country, one stands out as egregiously vulgar. It evokes in me the moral equivalent of the middle-ear reflex to high intensity sounds, which has a special place in the hierarchy of unpleasant sensations. It's the tax nationalism argument. In essence, it's this: How dare students benefitting from subsidized education funded by OUR tax money hold opinions that...

-The Indian Express Gamlina’s response is just one example of how distant this government is from the lives of the poor and how tokenistic its schemes are. Gamlina Soren, an elected panchayat member in Jharkhand, sounded upset. She had been told by a local BJP functionary that gas cylinders were going to be “gifted” to poor women by the Centre but that they must have a BPL card. “But most poor Adivasi...

-The Hindu The Finance Minister’s prescriptions are a classic case of being unable to see the wood for the trees, be it on the tax proposals, the rural outreach or the bank bailout. It was a marathon achievement: 12,187 words in 111 minutes. True, there were no interruptions; the Finance Minister virtually sent the House to sleep. I have listened to many Budget speeches; and I cannot say that Dr. Manmohan Singh...