The Centre’s flagship project Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), in which it it mandatory to employ at least 33 per cent women of its total work force, has become a victim of male bias in Uttar Pradesh. Against guidelines for the scheme, aimed at empowering women through ensuring their share in income, on an average only 18 per cent women are getting employment in the most populated state...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

In the pre-budget Economic Survey 2010-11, the Union finance ministry made a strong pitch for the pro-growth impact of investment in human capital adding, “fortunately, there is awareness of this in India and efforts are afoot in terms of budgetary allocation and actual initiatives to boost the development of skill and human capital.” Given this leading comment, it was only natural that Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee laid special emphasis...

Larry Summers, the recently departed Chairman of US President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, posed the following question before his trip to India last November: “What is the self-perception of the Congress as a political party?” In fact, this broad question provokes three specific ones in the domain of economics. Is the Congress the party of Jagdish Bhagwati or Amartya Sen; Nehru or Indira Gandhi; or Aruna Roy or Nandan...

Say there is no way the workers can be paid less than the minimum wages Open Statement on Prime Minister’s Assertion that the NREGA Wage Rate is ‘Delinked’ from the Minimum Wages Act We the undersigned are shocked at the Prime Minister’s statement in a letter to the Chairperson of the National Advisory Council that ‘statutorily the wage rate under NREGA is delinked and independent of the provisions of the Minimum...