-Newsclick.in In an open letter addressed to Nirmala Sitharaman, 51 eminent economists have flagged less contribution to NOAPS and the lack of action on ensuring maternity benefits. Several prominent economists have proposed to the Union finance ministry to increase social security pensions and make adequate provisions for maternity benefits in the 2023-24 Union Budget. In an open letter addressed to Union finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman, 51 eminent economists—including Abhijeet Singh (Stockholm School...

-TheWire.in "The central government’s contribution to old-age pensions...has stagnated at just Rs 200 per month since 2006. This is unfair." New Delhi: Sixty economists from across the country have written to finance minister Arun Jaitley, asking him to ensure that social security pensions and maternity benefits get adequate attention in the Union Budget 2019. They argue that they had made a similar “modest” request before the 2018 Budget, but it went unheeded. The...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

About four years after its first survey on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Orissa's hinterlands that showed large-scale defalcation of money, the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Environment and Food Security today in its second performance audit revealed that 67 per cent of very poor Dalit and tribal households in Orissa and UP did not get even a single day of the NREGS employment during previous...

**page** [inside]KEY TRENDS of the Union Budget 2023-24[/inside] Budget 2023-24 is the last full budget before the general election scheduled for 2024. An analysis of the budget allocations suggests that the union government has squeezed expenditure, particularly on food subsidy and the NREGA budget, while boosting Capital expenditure and giving the middle class tax benefits. Social sector activists working on Right to Food, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came out with...