-NDTV Hyderabad: New state Telangana's first ever Budget session begins today with some bleak statistics on the table. Nearly 350 farmers have committed suicide in the five months since the state came into being on June 2 this year. Finance Minister Etala Rajender will present the Budget in the Assembly today. The opposition will arrive in the House ready to attack the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti or TRS government on farmers'...
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Dangerous withdrawal -Prabhat Patnaik
-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...
More »Why some economists are worried about the fate of NREGA under Modi govt -Debobrat Ghose
-FirstPost.com What compelled a group of leading economists from India and abroad to shoot a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the government's job scheme - the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or NREGA? Is it to speak out against the government's desperation to throttle the scheme or did the economists sense any ulterior motive behind the government's move? A section of prominent Indian economists working out of the country or...
More »And peanuts for MGNREGA -Bunker Roy
-The Indian Express We want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to succeed in his national campaign to tackle the vast problems of the poor in Bharat. But his one-time contractor turned Union minister for rural development is succeeding in making his own prime minister look contradictory and indecisive to the nation and the world. The prime minister talks about constructing toilets and improving sanitation, opening bank accounts for every poor, excluded family,...
More »Telling the right reform from the wrong -Pramathesh Ambasta
-The Indian Express Moves to dilute labour-material ratio in MGNREGA and focus exclusively on select backward blocks will adversely impact rural poor. Before the general elections, free-market fundamentalists had lobbied fiercely to reshape so-called wasteful social-sector expenditures. Primary among their targets was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which, according to them, should become an unconditional cash transfer scheme. Post-elections, the late Gopinath Munde's espousal of the MGNREGA went...
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