-The Times of India UPA's flagship rural guarantee scheme is performing fitfully in terms of work days, wages and coverage, amply confirming rural development minister Jairam Ramesh's fears that the programme has become a scheme for digging ditches. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, UPA's outreach to the poor, is not meeting critical parameters and is crying out for reform with questions about the utility a Rs 36,000-crore a year budget...

-The Indian Express Jairam Ramesh’s criticism of NREGA highlights that a rights-based approach to poverty reduction cannot work without improving implementation The clamour for the right to social pensions is another attempt to deal with the Indian state’s inability to provide adequate social protection to its poorest citizens through targeted programmes. India’s vulnerable continue to be excluded from social safety nets. The multi-layered problems with social welfare schemes can be summarised in...

A prominent social worker whose father was an air chief marshal has been slapped a notice of externment from Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for alleged obstruction of development work and spreading “fear” among officials. Madhuri Krishnaswamy, who frequently clashed with bureaucrats and the political leadership in the 15 years she has worked among tribals, has been barred from entering Barwani and five adjoining districts under the notice, usually issued against...

-PTI A Parliamentary Panel on Thursday expressed concern over the "slow pace and uneven coverage" of BPL survey under the Socio Economic and Caste census-2011 (SECC). Noting that the survery under the SECC is yet to commence in the states including Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Manipur, the Standing Committee on Rural Development asked the government to adopt a "more action-oriented approach" including regular monitoring of the progress in co-ordination with the...

The robust 9 per cent –plus growth in South Asia till 2010, driven largely by India, where it came down to around 7 per cent in 2011-12, had one major qualifier: it was mostly associated with a rapid rise in labour productivity rather than an expansion in employment, according to the latest report Global Employment Trends from International Labour Office. Up until the end of the millennium, that is just a...