-NDTV.com In February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Parliament, ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program as a symbol of the policy failures of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh and, in his typical coarse style, taunted that he would bleed the program to a slow death. Exactly six years later, on February 12, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala...
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Dams and damages -Kavita UPAdhyay
-The Hindu The Uttarakhand government continues to ignore evidence that hydropower projects in the fragile region exacerbate disasters In 2018, while travelling through the villages near the India-China border in Niti Valley in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, I stopped at Reni village, the birthplace of the iconic Chipko movement. The way to Reni was dotted with hydropower projects that were marred by controversy. The villagers complained about the rampant flouting of norms by...
More »We still deem us as ‘subjects’ not ‘citizens’ and Indians in government as ‘masters’ -Kannan Gopinathan
-National Herald While Americans take themselves as citizens and demand responsibility and accountability from power, Indians are still slavish, says Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from IAS What happened in Washington DC at the Capitol Hill Building was watched in horror and everybody said, “Look democracy can fail even in America.” To me it looked like the triumph of American democracy. Attempts to overturn the Presidential election failed. State after state stood up to...
More »Agri Laws: Uttarakhand farmers start free bus service to Delhi protest site -Vineet UPAdhyay
-The New Indian Express More than 20,000 farmers from the district have joined others in Delhi at the protest site. DEHRADUN: Farmers from Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand have started a free bus service to ferry farmers to Delhi where their counterparts have been protesting against the newly passed agri laws. The service which started on Saturday will be available twice a week on Monday and Thursday. "The expenses will be borne by...
More »By amending Model Mandi Act, MP has pushed its agricultural sector into throes of uncertainty -Sunit Arora
-The Indian Express The state has posted high growth rates in the agricultural sector in recent years, but the growth has been skewed in favour of the state's irrigated parts and a small number of crops. Madhya Pradesh is primarily an agricultural state. One third of its gross state domestic product comes from this sector, half of the state’s area is used for cultivation, and 70 per cent of the total workers...
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