This series has flagged a puzzling trend. State governments are struggling to use Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication in ration shops. At the same time, a rising number of companies are integrating Aadhaar into their databases. This is puzzling because from its inception, Aadhaar, India’s Unique Identification project, was pitched as integral to the modernisation of social […]
Tag Archives: Welfare Programmes
Until last fortnight, most nights in Mizoram were lit up by the red glow of forest fires. Long thin lines of flame, rising and falling along the contours of the hills, ate their way up through the forest. It was jhum time in the state, when farmers who practice the traditional practice of slash-and-burn cultivation […]
out today, this story on the changes planned by the nda for nrega. Sanitation projects to reduce open defecation, increasing green cover and emphasis on creating assets form the crux of the Narendra Modi-led government’s blueprint for redeploying UPA’s flagship social sector programme — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA.Top officials […]
Bigger public-private partnership (PPPs) in social sector programmes and a thorough overhaul of the rural employment scheme to link it with creations of assets and infrastructure relating to agriculture and tourism are on the government agenda, the Economic Survey said. The biggest challenge confronting India is “unleasing the potential of its demographic dividend’, it said. […]
out today, a story on the possible outlook for the upa’s major development initiatives — aadhaar, cash transfers, npr, rights-based legislations, the proposed environment authority, the land acquisition bill — once the modi government takes over. It’s a space the incoming BJP-led government will need to .. Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/35353059.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
and so, upa2 presented its final budget – a vote on account – yesterday. and i wrote this quick little story comparing the developmental efforts of upa1 and upa2. In his speech today, Finance Minister P Chidambaram suggested UPA-II has done a good job on social welfare. As statements go, that assertion is not correct. […]
for a while now, we have known that nrega is not doing as well as before. this fact was painfully brought home last week when the hindustan times carried a story reporting that some nrega workers had committed suicide due to delays in payments. however, if you read the booklet that accompanied the prime minister’s […]
economist and iit delhi professor reetika khera is out with a new, edited volume on the first six years of nrega. and given that i am interested in figuring the myriad ways in which india — politicians, state governments, the centre, rich and poor farmers, babus, what have you — is responding to nrega, i […]
the third of three stories for et 50. It will probably take a big, fat book to describe the myriad impacts the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA ) has had on India. At one level, it has created a safety net for rural folks during summer months when employment is scarce. It has improved […]
december has been a slow month. i kept falling ill. anyway, here is a small (and guardedly optimistic) story on how to make the indian state more accountable. …a clutch of new laws, like the Right To Information Act (RTI) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), are moving the government’s developmental promises beyond […]
The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, has worked out a compromise formula for the food security act on Saturday. Keeping in mind the budgetary and the foodgrain constraints of the government the council has proposed “near universal with differential entitlements” food security programme. Under the compromised formula, 90% of the rural households and […]
The proposed National Food Security Bill could change rural India even more profoundly than the National Rural Employment Guarentee Act has. The Bill is expected to push India’s grain procurement up from the current 45 million tons to 80 million tons. It will also, depending on the approach the National Advisory Council recommends, provide 35 […]
THE National Advisory Council (NAC), it appears, is set to radically rewrite the the Food Security Bill. The meeting of the NAC, which discussed the draft bill prepared by the government, was of the view that the Centre should move beyond the traditional APL-BPL faultline and aim for an inclusive Bill… The members also agreed […]
India has seen a rise in social sector spending since 2004. The outcomes, however, have been underwhelming. The best-known illustration of this phenomenon is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) where the quality of assets and the number of jobdays created are far below expectations. It is the same story across programmes in health, […]
M Rajshekhar 