Conditional cash transfers are necessary but not sufficient for improving health. Good government-funded health care is essential, as are schemes which address social determinants of health. The march of capitalism, with its reduced emphasis on public spending, while improving many national economies has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor. For millions of Indians, hunger is routine, malnutrition rife, employment insecure, health care expensive and livelihoods are under...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

Only 400,000 jobs a year were generated during UPA-1, compared with 12 million annually during the NDA’s tenure Key economic data released by the government on Friday shows that the first stint of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) generated a mere 400,000 jobs a year, compared with 12 million jobs annually during the tenure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). During the period 2004-05 to...

-Reuters   Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...

The draft Food Security Bill makes it compulsory for state governments to pay a food security allowance to targeted sections in case of failure to supply foodgrain through a sweeping welfare scheme targeted at nearly three-fourths of the population. The amount will be decided by the central government. The draft bill also presses for a radical overhaul of the food distribution system by giving incentives to independent agencies that procure...