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...

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...

Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research Budget 2023-24 will be unveiled on February 1. As part of laying the context this brief, prepared by the Accountability Initiative, examines the allocation and expenditure trends for India's food subsidy.    At the start of the current Financial Year (FY) 2022-23, Government of India allocations for Food Subsidy stood at Rs. 2,06,831 crore, which was 28 percent lower than the previous year's Revised Estimates (REs)....

-Scroll.in The sugar-coated termination of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana calls for an urgent expansion of alternative social security measures. Much confusion surrounds the Modi government’s recent move to modify the foodgrain entitlements of National Food Security Act cardholders from January 1, 2023 onwards. The move actually has two steps, cleverly synchronised. The first step consists of waiving, for one year, the token payments that National Food Security Act, or NFSA, cardholders...

- Press release by Right to Food campaign dated 30 December, 2022 The Right to Food campaign has demanded that the government should restore the grain entitlements granted under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). On 23 December, 2022 the Union government announced that it would discontinue the PMGKAY from 1 January, 2023, thus halving the ration entitlements of eligible people.  Under the National Food Security Act, 2013, (NFSA), all priority category ration cardholders...