-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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Bengal always a laggard in job guarantee scheme -Dwaipayan Ghosh
-The Times of India KOLKATA: While the country celebrates the seventh anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Bengal continues to be one of the poor performers. The Paschimbanga Khet Majdoor Union alleges that a group of vested interests, "comprising landed farmers, industrialists and a section of the intelligentsia" were working in tandem to subvert the positives of NREGA in the state. The union, which has criticized both the...
More »A 'Cost-Benefit' Analysis of UID-Reetika Khera
-Economic and Political Weekly A cost-benefi t analysis by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy of the benefits from Aadhaar integration with seven schemes throws up huge benefi ts that are based almost entirely on unrealistic assumptions. Further, the report does not take into account alternative technologies that could achieve the same or similar savings, possibly at lower cost. Reetika Khera (reetika.khera@gmail.com) is at the Institute of Economic Growth on...
More »Why the Parliament should reject the standing committee’s recommendations on the Food Security Bill: RTFC
-Kafila.org This statement was put out by the RIGHT TO FOOD CAMPAIGN on 24 January The much awaited recommendations of the Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution on the National Food Security Bill are a letdown to those who wrote to the Committee urging it to ensure justice to the people of India. The Committee despite taking a year since December 2011 when the Bill was tabled in the...
More »Jairam Ramesh, rural development minister interviewed by The Economic Times
-The Economic Times Over the past 15 months, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has made more than 150 visits to 41 of the 82 Naxal-affected districts. Emerging as the government's face in these remote areas, Ramesh talks to ET about the efforts and progress needed to contain the Maoist influence. * Fifteen months of "development" focus in the Naxal-affected areas. What's the progress? It's a mixed bag: some progress in Jharkhand, West...
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