-The Times of India While Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh waxed eloquent on the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and called it a key instrument for "financial inclusion" at a government conference in New Delhi on Saturday, latest data reveal a picture of declining employment generation under the scheme. Even more startling: Jobs created for the most marginalized sections - dalits and adivasis - have...
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Hands that helped speed up Verma report -Vijaita Singh
-The Indian Express Saumya Saxena, who is researching gender justice at Cambridge University, was in New Delhi when a 23-year-old woman was gangraped in a bus on December 16. When the government set up the J S Verma Committee to suggest amendments to criminal laws in the wake of the rape, Soumya wanted to become part of the effort. “I wrote to them and asked them if I could be a part...
More »Malegaon blast accused starts legal aid NGO to help those ‘wrongly arrested’ -Smita Nair
-The Indian Express Mumbai: In 2006, soon after the Malegaon bomb blasts, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested a Unani medicine practitioner alleging he harboured Pakistanis and smuggled the RDX used in the explosives. After five years in prison, and a year outside on bail, Dr Salman Farsi Monday launched a NGO called Justice Legal Voice (JLV) to provide legal aid to the “wrongly arrested”. Farsi recalls that he was nothing but ‘accused...
More »The poorest shun MGNREGA-Jitendra
-Down to Earth Participation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes in the scheme has halved in five years The Centre’s flagship rural employment guarantee scheme seems to be losing appeal for its target groups. An analysis of the monitoring report of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by Down To Earth (DTE) shows participation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the scheme has more than halved in last...
More »The Case for Direct Cash Transfers to the Poor-Arvind Subramanian, Devesh Kapur and Partha Mukhopadhyay
The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...
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