The key to the United Progressive Alliance’s return to power in 2009 lay in its promise of “inclusive growth” centred on the aam aadmi. On top of the launching of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), this gave the UPA immeasurably greater appeal and legitimacy than its rivals. But it also entailed obligations to implement other rights-based programmes, on food security, education and healthcare, among others. The National...
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Going against the grain by Reetika Khera
The National Advisory Council (NAC) had been widely credited with framing three pro-people legislations — the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Right to Information (RTI) and the Forest Rights Act — under the UPA 1 government. So when NAC 2 began discussions on the Food Security Act in mid-2010, expectations were high. The initial vision of an act with a universal public distribution system (PDS), extensive children's entitlements...
More »Maximum denial
‘The least that every worker in field and factory is entitled to is a minimum wage which will enable him to live in modest comfort, and humane hours of labour which do not break his strength or spirit...,’ Jawaharlal Nehru declared stirringly in his presidential address to Congress in Lahore in 1929. Eight decades later, the Union government of free India resolved that it would not pay the minimum wage...
More »Maximum Dithering for Minimum Wages!
Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...
More »Failure to handle MGNREGA caused Joshi's tranfer by Anindo Dey
For Union minister C P Joshi the failure to handle the UPA goverment's flagship programme of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) resulted in his transition from rural development to surface transport. Joshi had not acted on a letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to raise MGNREGA wages and also stood in contempt of an Andhra Pradesh High Court order. Joshi was earlier seen as a trusted man...
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