-Down to Earth Persisting with the current institutional arrangement will do more harm than good The manner in which the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has agreed to divert 4,578 hectares (ha) of prime forestland to construct the 3,000 MW Dibang multipurpose project (DMP) has yet again convinced me of the need to replace the present system of granting forest clearances. FAC, in its...
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‘Indian women hardly have any say in decision making’ -Mahendra Singh
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Women empowerment may be the key slogan for every government since independence, but the findings of a government report show women still lag way behind men in having a say in decision making and in their participation in economic activity. The Central Statistics Office (CSO)'s publication "Women and Men in India 2014" found that women occupied seven out of 45 ministerial positions in the Narendra Modi's...
More »Why This Attack on MGNREGA?
-Economic and Political Weekly One knows who will suffer if the Narendra Modi government succeeds in weakening MGNREGA. The largest public employment programme the world has ever seen is in trouble. In 2013-14, 74 million individuals in 48 million households in rural India were employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act programme (or MGNREGA as it is called), with each household on average finding work for 46 days. This...
More »Senior bureaucrat bats for food security concern
-The Business Standard Cabinet secretary asks WTO to not put issue on backburner but address it up front Laying down India's stand on World Trade Organisation negotiations, cabinet secretary Ajit Seth on Thursday said the country's food security concerns cannot be relegated to the back-burner, but should be addressed up front. "Addressing the food security concerns is important, as India still has 190 million hungry people," Seth said at an event organised...
More »Govt may downsize MGNREGA to boost scheme impact on the poor -Chetan Chauhan
-The Hindustan Times For fiscal prudence and better outcome of public expenditure, the Narendra Modi government is likely to downsize some of the social sector schemes, including the rural job guarantee programme, the biggest grosser of the central funds. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated about Rs. 33,351 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) in his budget this July but many believe that the huge expenditure was not...
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