Scroll.in Though the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) has refocussed attention on school education in recent years, some fundamental problems continue to plague the system. Despite the constitutional and legal obligations of governments, education budgets have remained modest and woefully inadequate to requirements. While there has been a reasonable expansion of coverage and enrolment in schools, the fundamental issue of poor learning outcomes, especially...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Poverty and inequality
KEY TRENDS • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...
More »Hunger and Malnutrition in India after a Decade of the National Food Security Act, 2013 - Neetu Sharma, Jyotsna Sripada, Shruthi Raman
National Law School of India University, Bengaluru What is the status of hunger and malnutrition in India? The year 2023 marks a decade since the enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The Act aims to provide food and nutritional security by ensuring access to quality food at affordable prices. However, despite 10 years of food security being a legal right and the availability of sufficient quantities of food grains, India...
More »Expand PDS to include non-ration card holders and 10 crore excluded by using old census figures: Right to Food Campaign
A coalition of civil society activits has criticized the Union Budget 2023-24 for reducing government spending on the social sector by a massive amount. The economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic was borne disproportionately by those at the bottom of the pyramid and in this context spending on social protection schemes such as the Public Distribution System, anganwadis, pensions and MGNREGA is especially important. But the Government of India has...
More »Budget 2023-24: NREGA, Food Subsidy, Mid day meal allocations cut drastically
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), National Food Security Act (NFSA) are schemes whose allocations have been cut drastically in Budget 2023-24, while the Mid-Day Meals budget has also seen a sharp drop. An analysis by the Accountability Initiative (AI) at the Centre for Policy Research reveals that in the case of NREGA and NFSA, the reduction has been over 30 percent! The budget for Mid-Day meals...
More »