-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing Agricultural Wages. The paper has received wide media...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...

-The Financial Express Seven years after MGNREGA came into being, the CAG report tabled on Tuesday in Parliament paints a dismal picture of the UPA's flagship rural employment guarantee programme. According to the CAG, while employment generation fell from 54 days per household in FY10 to 43 days in FY12, states that account for 46% of the rural poor - Bihar, Maharashtra and UP - utilised only a fifth of the...

-The Business Standard Overall GDP growth, farm growth has more impact on increasing real farm wages than MGNREGS Even as the United Progressive Alliance government is touting the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) as its biggest step for the uplift of the rural poor, a discussion paper floated by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) suggests compared to this scheme, growth in overall gross domestic product, agriculture...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...