-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Sanitation projects to reduce open defecation, increasing green cover and emphasis on creating assets form the crux of the Narendra Modi-led government's blueprint for redeploying UPA's flagship social sector programme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA. Top officials aware of the government's re-orientation roadmap for the rural employment guarantee scheme, being steered by rural development minister Nitin Gadkari, told ET that assessment...
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Mean and petty labour reforms -Colin Gonsalves
-The Hindu Even decades after independence, the introduction of a ‘secret ballot' for labourers to recognise trade unions remains elusive The National Democratic Alliance government, on June 5 and June 17, notified the proposed amendments to the Factories Act, 1948 and the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Given that the process of amendments began in 2008 and went through a number of expert committees, one would have expected the amendments to be carefully...
More »Dalit women ensure Mid Day Meals for children -Shuriah Niazi
-One World South Asia/ Women's Feature Service This is a success story. The backdrop: a small, dusty village in Madhya Pradesh; the protagonists: oppressed dalit women, who managed to shed their inhibitions and overcome centuries old caste and class baggage to save their children from the curse of hunger and severe malnutrition. Mundalana village in Sonkatch block of Dewas district is home to 800 dalits, out of a total population of 2,600. Owing...
More »No going back on MGNREGA -Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy
-The Indian Express The budget will reveal whether the BJP is committed to this transformative programme. Mohandas Pai, currently an advisor to the BJP government in Rajasthan, was asked on television how the government could "control" social sector expenditure, more specifically on the MGNREGA. He answered that the NDA should simply learn from and follow former Union minister P. Chidambaram's policy of "benign neglect". Clarifying further, he explained how the UPA...
More »Still smug about the high growth years? -Ashoak Upadhyay
-The Hindu Business Line Drop the euphoria for a moment - a third of India is seriously poor. And urban poverty has risen sharply The latest report on the number of poor Indians shows a third of the population living below the recalibrated poverty lines. C Rangarajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and former chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, was asked to look into the matter...
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