-Frontline The new crop insurance scheme introduced by the NDA government in an election year does not provide for a comprehensive coverage of all crops, against all forms of damage and at all stages of the crop cycle. IN AN election year, it is but natural that incumbent governments will introduce welfare policies and schemes. But the problem is that distribution of such largesse in a neoliberal dispensation can only be...

-Down to Earth The BJP-led government's change of heart for big-ticket rural programmes says a lot about its dwindling political fortune India's current political season has a nostalgic tint. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has apparently met party leaders to kickstart a campaign against the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’S) overt efforts to softly kill the erstwhile government’s flagship programmes. Particularly, the NDA government’s political decisions to not pursue the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

-The Hindu Muslims, who form 27.01 per cent of West Bengal’s population, “constitute a very large proportion of the poor” in the State, Professor Amartya Sen said. He was releasing a voluminous report on the condition of Muslims in West Bengal titled ‘Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal.’ “The fact that Muslims in West Bengal are disproportionately poorer and more deprived in terms of living conditions is an empirical recognition that gives...

-Frontline.in An initiative focussed on Kerala’s development experience exposes a worrying trend of rising inequality and proposes a strategy for sustainable and equitable growth. THE fourth international Congress on Kerala Studies, organised by the A.K.G. Centre for Study and Research in Thiruvananthapuram on January 9-10, has generated much interest for its focus on a worrying new trend in Kerala’s development experience: rising inequality and marginalisation of large sections of people despite...

-The Asian Age Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) a “living monument” of the failure of the economic policies of the Indian National Congress which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947? Or is it that the MGNREGA, a law enacted a decade ago which seeks to implement the world’s biggest and most ambitious job creating scheme, one of the few...