-The Hindu Business Line MNREGA Act may be amended to end present disparity From April 1, wage rates under the UPA's flagship MGNREGA will be revised upwards across the country. The wages are now linked to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labour (CPI-AL). A notification to this effect is being issued for the period April 1 to March 31, 2013, the Rural Development Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, informed the Lok Sabha on...
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Poverty line: Usefulness of poverty data-S Mahendra Dev
The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes). The commission...
More »States' data cast doubt on growth-poverty equation; welfare schemes have a strong role to play by Devika Banerji
The sharp drop in poverty estimates in the latest count has been attributed largely to the high growth over 2004-2010, but disaggregated state-level data does not seem to provide conclusive evidence. The national poverty count dropped to 29.8% in 2009-10 from 37.2% in 2004-05, but in states such as Bihar, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and even Punjab the decline was much less even though they reported a visible improvement in economic growth...
More »Raj fares well, registers 9% decline in poverty-Anindo Dey
No. Of People Below Poverty Line Dips To 24.8% From 34.4% In Rajasthan, if you earn more than Rs 846 per month (Rs 28.20 per day) in urban areas and Rs 755 per month (Rs 25.16 per day) in rural areas, then you are not below poverty line. The data was released by the Planning Commission on Monday. This is a jump from Rs 568.15 per month (Rs 18.93 per day)...
More »Is this the end of the road for MGNREGA?-Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
In an interview with Mint in February, Jairam Ramesh, minister of rural development, was asked whether the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) would be rolled back in the upcoming budget as part of a plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. “How can we roll back a demand-driven programme?” Ramesh had replied. But that is precisely what seems to have happened. On Friday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced a...
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