The Union Government’s belated decision to establish an audit mechanism for projects undertaken under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been motivated by a number of complaints regarding irregularities in the implementation of the programme. The Government should have taken the step much earlier, in fact soon after the scheme was introduced with much fanfare as the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s flagship social sector project. But at...
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NREGS and poverty alleviation: Teach them to fish! by Shreekant Sambrani
You see those hills?” Jamshed Kanga, an illustrious IAS officer, then divisional commissioner, Pune, asked the noted development economist John Lewis who was visiting him in 1972, pointing to the barren Sahyadri range behind his office. “I will break every one of those if necessary, but will not let a single person starve.” It was the worst drought in the history of independent India, with a monsoon deficit of 25%...
More »Ashish Bose, Demographer interviewed by Shobhan Saxena
In 1985, Ashish Bose coined the term BIMARU while preparing a report on national population growth rate for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. At the time, he was a professor at Delhi's Institute of Economic Growth. Ever since, BIMARU has been used to describe the four northern states that are seen as symptomatic of what's wrong with India.Shobhan Saxena asks Bose, 80, if Bihar is proof that BIMARU is history. Bihar...
More »8 Indian States have 421 million multidimensionally poor people by Aarti Dhar
Eight Indian States are home to 421 million multidimensionally poor people, more than the figure of 410 million in 26 poorest African countries. The Multidimensional Poverty Index — which identifies serious simultaneous deprivations in health, education and income at the household level in 104 countries — brought out in the latest United Nations Human Development Report has calculated that South Asia is home to half of the world's multi-dimensionally poor population,...
More »Report on Naxal-infested districts soon: Montek
Ahead of the July 24 National Development Council (NDC) meeting, the Planning Commission will come out with a report on the problems in the Naxal-hit areas and the issues being faced by tribals. "We are going circulate a supplementary report on the special problems of the tribal districts. This will also cover those districts which are in the grip of Naxalism," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters in...
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