'As our per capita income increases and various demographic segments emerge, the need for various kinds of protection and risk covers will become even more explicit.'
The substantially increased economic dualism may exert lasting negative influences which could include a reduced potential for economic growth; the persistence of a very weak employment and poverty situation; rising social and political discord; and heightened vulnerability to geopolitical challenges, cautions Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
Less than nine per cent of Chhattisgarh households got jobs for 100 days under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act during 2007-08 to 2011-12, a Comptroller and Auditor General report tabled in the assembly on Wednesday said.
'The fiscal pressure will be there, but the intent of the government behind this move is to spur demand and growth.'
However, 63 per cent Indians were "satisfied" with their standard of living
As the second wave of the pandemic ebbs and the daily caseload falls, the struggles of the urban poor have come into focus. Many have suffered income and job losses after two successive waves. The second wave, in particular, has seen the poor being hit hard on account of lack of medical and financial help. For the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies this has meant that an important segment is under severe distress.
The new Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian believes that more than unemployment, it is the quality of employment which needs to be focused on. In an interview with Arup Roychoudhury and Indivjal Dhasmana, Subramanian said that controlling inflation was the Modi government's biggest achievement.
It took a lockdown for us in India to even recognise that the plight of migrants needs to be addressed. They were faceless and unrecognised. They were unappreciated and even hounded. They were poorly paid and exploited, notes Ramesh Menon.
The middle class is a big force to fulfil dreams of a prosperous and developed India and our government has taken many decisions to empower it, the prime minister said.
Nearing the four crore (40 million) mark in providing jobs under MGNREGA, re-launching the Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas scheme and reinforcing social audit in programmes on complaints of irregularities were the foremost tasks of the rural development ministry in 2010.
Government claims big successes in agriculture, rural roads & investment scenario.
Mandates have been handed out to staffing solutions companies such as Randstad India and TeamLease, officials at these firms have said, as players increasingly push into rural areas to capitalise on the uptick in the hinterlands.
Sharing his experience of the yatra so far, the Congress leader said he felt sad while talking to farmers, youth, and tribals.
India wants peace with Pakistan but there can be no compromise with its own territorial integrity, President Pranab Mukherjee has said, while asserting that state-sponsored terrorism from across the border cannot be accepted.
Justifying the United Progressive Aliance government's decision to bring the food security bill through an ordinance, Union Food Minister K V Thomas on Thursday said the Centre is confident that it will be ratified in the monsoon session of Parliament commencing on August 5.
The new agri-infra fund, the duration of which will be 10 years till 2029, aims to provide medium-to-long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects for post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets through interest subvention and financial support.
The Congress strategy is to reach out to the rural poor as BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has successfully displaced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the middle class hero. Anita Katyal reports
Welcoming the latest round of stimulus announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, experts said the measures will support the economic recovery boosting demand, job creation and by providing funds to the MSME and stressed sectors. The fiscal impact of the stimulus is likely to be around 0.25-0.6 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal, they said.
In its report to the rural development ministry, the NLM has also noted that 60 per cent of the districts have 'unsatisfactory or irrelevant' choice of works under the Act and its technical supervision was also absent.
About 4.5 crore (45 million) households across the country benefited from the pioneering National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the financial year 2008-09, an increase of 32 per cent over the previous year, says the Economic survey.
A government-sponsored study on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has found large-scale corruption and irregularities in the implementation of the programme in several states with authorities in some areas misappropriating' central funds and threatening workers to keep their mouth shut."There was great fraud in the making (of job) cards, muster rolls were not maintained properly and work was not provided to job seekers sometimes," a team of researchers said.
Gandhi claimed that authoritarian tendencies are becoming clearer, with the erosion of fundamental rights being accompanied by a narrow imposition of conformity and obedience from dutiful citizens. voters polarised for electoral gains
This will cost the government Rs 3.1 trillion, about 10 per cent of its annual expenditure, and higher than any other spending item in its Budget.
The Congress won 40 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly while the BJP got 25 seats.
The IMF believes the farm laws passed by the Indian government have the potential to represent a significant step forward for agricultural reforms, but a social safety net is needed to protect those who might be adversely impacted during the transition to the new system, a spokesperson of the global lender said in Washington.
'I'll give it to the vaccine manufacturers without guarantees, take the payment in advance and give me the supplies.' 'The moment you give me one lot of supply, I'll give you more.'
Dipak Brahma, a resident of Dhantola Mandaria, a forest village in Kokrajhar district, had recently returned from Gujarat, where he worked as a labourer. He was jobless and finding it hard to support his family, according to an official of an NGO working against human trafficking.
It is true that, at 119 crore person-days, the employment created this year by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), the government's flagship programme, is tiny, a fraction of one percentage point of the total employment in the country.
Launching the scheme, Modi said during the nationwide lockdown, the talent from cities returned to villages and it will now give a boost to development of rural areas. The 'Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyaan' will be implemented on a mission mode in 125 days in 116 districts of six states -- Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha -- that received the maximum numbers of migrant workers back.
It was the rejection of the Congress' welfarist economics by voters that led to the party's drubbing, says Andy Mukherjee.
India does not have a unified regulatory regime to counter Ponzi, or pyramid, schemes whose operators typically grab new deposits to meet their promise of guaranteed returns to existing savers, point out Manoj Kumar and Mayank Bhardwaj.
Had Finance Minister Sitharaman thought a little more about the middle class, disadvantaged sections, and the poor who are struggling, it would have been an inclusive Budget that would have made history, notes Ramesh Menon.
'Jobs will exist at very high levels or low levels of skill sets.' 'People, who are in middle level jobs, are the ones who are facing the problem as such jobs are fast disappearing because of technological advancement.'
The centre pays only an insulting Rs 200 per pensioner each month at a tight-fisted 0.04 per cent of GDP, among the lowest in the world. Instead, as illustrated by Jean Drze, one option is for NYAY to provide individual rather than household entitlements to all pensioners of at least Rs 1200 per month.
The National Informatics Centre has been at the forefront of almost each and every e-governance project you can think of in India.
As the world awaits the end of the global pandemic, rural Bengal might be witnessing a recession unfolding in bits and pieces. With factories and tea gardens closing down, agricultural income falling and storm Aila ravaging a large part of deltaic West Bengal in 2010, migration gradually became a norm.
The Congress will only be able to gain from the bill if its benefits percolate down to the people within the next eight months, says Anita Katyal
Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, charged the government with not delivering on its various promises, including generating two crore jobs per year.
On Gandhi Jayanti, she also invoked the Father of the Nation, to assail the government which, she claimed, swears by his name but demolishes his ideals through its actions.