-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must open up conventional and unconventional avenues for women to find their way into the workforce Officials in the finance ministry are busy with budgetary consultations. At the outset, it needs to be recognised that the Union Budget is more than a mere accounting exercise as it lays out the vision of the government and provides a strategy to implement it during the course of that year. In...

-The Hindu Business Line Going by the experience worldwide, it is unlikely to generate jobs in the formal sector Changes in land and labour laws are the two most important components of the second generation of economic reforms. Since early 1990, a slew of economic reforms have been initiated in almost all sectors. However, the governments in power from 1990 through 2014 did not introduce radical changes in the prevailing land and...

-PTI Mobile phone production in India has reached 100 million with leading companies setting up their manufacturing base in the country, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Saturday. “Today, I am happy to announce that in December, Rs. 1.14 lakh crore investment has come in electronic manufacturing in India. “We have attracted around 15 new mobile plants.” “Earlier in 2014, 68 million (mobile phones) were being manufactured and now 100 million are...