-The United Nations A United Nations top official today called on academics to get involved in essential research to help reduce rural poverty and assist small-scale farmers as part of the global fight against hunger. “One of the great challenges we have today is to use academic knowledge to understand and improve the life of rural populations throughout the world,” said the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano...
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Rural Development Ministry proposes plan to assess effectiveness of welfare schemes
-The Economic Times It was in the mid-eighties that former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said if the Centre released a rupee for the poor, only 15 paisa reached them. Decades later, not much has changed. With leakages, delays, and uneven implementation of welfare schemes like NREGA, blunting benefits to the poor, the rural development ministry is proposing to put in place a system to assess the effectiveness of the schemes even...
More »Manmohan Singh seeks quick fix for delayed NREGS payments
-The Times of India In a rare move, government on Saturday released a compendium of independent studies on job guarantee scheme — both appreciative and critical of the programme — prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singhto ask the rural development ministry to fix the issue of delayed payment for workers and minister Jairam Ramesh flagging corruption as a problem. Top Policymakers of UPA gathered at the PM's residence for the release of "MGNREGA...
More »Manmohan rural job nudge to Montek-Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph The Prime Minister today expressed surprise that “concurrent evaluation” of the rural job scheme was “not in good shape” and asked Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to “apply his mind to making good this deficiency”. Concurrent evaluation is an assessment of a scheme’s impact, strength and weaknesses while it is being implemented, as distinct from the annual CAG audit or a post-mortem. Its objective is to identify problems...
More »No One Killed Agriculture
-Inclusion.in There is good news. And there’s bad news. The good news first. There’s been a bumper wheat crop and the granaries are overflowing. And the bad news? Where do we begin? A lot of that grain will rot. Millions will still remain hungry. Heavily in debt and distressed, farmers are committing suicide. Food prices are soaring. There’s more… Farmers don’t have money. Their land is too small and isn’t yielding much. Fertilisers and...
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