-The Hindu Study says 10 per cent of Rajasthan's population migrates seasonally in search of work Jaipur: As many as 5.79 million people in Rajasthan, or 10 per cent of the State's population, migrates seasonally in search of employment, says a new study on MIgration and labour. Approximately 4.38 million households thus send a person or more to other States in search of work seasonally, it adds. The number of migrants per household...

-Down to Earth There are other factors for food price inflation, says the study commissioned in the wake of persistent double digit food price inflation between 2012-13 The rural job scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which guarantees 100 days of unskilled job to rural households in a year, has been blamed by a number of economists for food price inflation. But a new study by the Reserve Bank...

-The Hindu Business Line The number of people commuting between rural and urban areas and across geographies has risen dramatically In the last couple of decades, the number of people commuting between rural and urban areas on a daily basis has seen an explosive growth. This includes unskilled workers without a fixed place of work. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, between 1993-94 and 2009-10, India saw a nearly fourfold increase (from...

-The Indian Express We want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to succeed in his national campaign to tackle the vast problems of the poor in Bharat. But his one-time contractor turned Union minister for rural development is succeeding in making his own prime minister look contradictory and indecisive to the nation and the world. The prime minister talks about constructing toilets and improving sanitation, opening bank accounts for every poor, excluded family,...

-The Indian Express Moves to dilute labour-material ratio in MGNREGA and focus exclusively on select backward blocks will adversely impact rural poor. Before the general elections, free-market fundamentalists had lobbied fiercely to reshape so-called wasteful social-sector expenditures. Primary among their targets was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which, according to them, should become an unconditional cash transfer scheme. Post-elections, the late Gopinath Munde's espousal of the MGNREGA went...