• Key Facts

• Farmers' suicides

• Rural distress

• Debt Trap

• Unemployment

• Migration

• GENDER

• Displacement

• Right to Food

• Right to Work (MG-NREGA)

• Social Audit

• Right to Information

• Right to Education

• Forest and Tribal Rights

• Policy/ Action so far

• Poverty and inequality

• Hunger Overview

• Malnutrition

• HDI Overview

• Education

• Public Health

• Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS)

• PDS/ Ration/ Food Security

• MDGs

• Water and Sanitation

• Impact on Agriculture

• Time Bomb Ticking

• Access to Justice

• Human Rights

• Corruption

• General Insecurity

• Disaster & Relief

Social Protection Can Help Overcome Poverty and Hunger -Jomo Kwame Sundaram

d in relation to urban formal sector wage employment. But in developing countries, rural social provisioning has often involved "workfare" rather than state welfare as with India's National rural employment Guarantee Act. FAO's distinctive approach to cash transfers - which accelerates the transition ‘from protection to production' - helps ensure more sustainable means to overcome hunger and poverty, thus pointing the way forward

Chhattisgarh implements cheap food access-Sreelatha Menon

a block of this district, several villagers who did not have BPL cards attended the camps; they might get lucky this time but no one has told them yet. Devki, 70, working at a site under the National rural employment Guarantee Scheme, says she has never ever got a ration card; if she got 35 kg a month, she says, it would end her troubles. She had attended the camp in the village but is clueless if her name has been approved for a new card. In fac

Right to food or drinking water? -Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

ass housewives to owners of sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Or consider another example: the Indian government has spent close to Rs.2 trillion on providing jobs under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural employment Guarantee Act. Surely it is time to ask whether the money would have been better spent on rural roads or minor irrigation projects or village schools. What would have made a more lasting impact on rural poverty? To ask the question is to

Dealing with inequalities

er modest progress has been made will depend critically on governments preventing such a huge segment from slipping back into the less than $2 a day income level. India's Mahatma Gandhi National rural employment Guarantee Act has come in for particular mention for ensuring minimum wages for unskilled labour in rural areas, thus enabling a narrowing of income inequality. A highlight in the report is a 20 percentage point rise in the proportion of

Question of survival -TK Rajalakshmi

a strong case for MGNREGS works to be continued even in States with high per capita incomes. Hisar and Fatehabad: CONTRARY to general opinion, demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is high in Haryana. Contrary also to the views in recent discussion papers, one of them commissioned by the Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices in April 2013 which suggests that farm wages are rising bec

Welfare schemes key to saving ecosystems -Jayashree Nandi

In Vidarbha, droughts have become an annual feature. Absence of irrigation and efficient watershed management make small farmers even more vulnerable. Although schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana or the Indira Awaas Yojana are not viewed as adaptation policies, many agree they play an important role in making communities climate-resilient. Recent reports by the Indi

A wrong diagnosis

er represented the activist heart of the NAC. The immediate provocation for Ms Roy's departure, according to her statements in the press, has been disagreement over minimum wages in the National rural employment Guarantee Scheme. This may only be the last straw as she is concerned, however. The real point is that, when economic growth ceases, it becomes impossible for a government to expand any welfare schemes. If Ms Roy worries that UPA-II has p

The Neglect of Health, Women and Justice-AK Shiva Kumar

cognition of the Right to Food in general and legislation to guarantee the entitlements to food for all. Recent experience (including Supreme Court orders on the right to food as well as the National rural employment Guarantee Act) shows the value of putting economic and social rights in relation to a legal framework. Legislation should recognise that food and nutritional security depends not just on food but on a set of related interventions that pro

Aruna Roy presses govt for pension to all unorganised labour

Having quit the National Advisory Council (NAC), Aruna Roy of the Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS) will intensify the movement to get minimum wages countrywide under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural employment Guarantee Act and a Rs 1,000 a month pension for unorganised labourers. She will also press the government to make it mandatory to have a pre-legislation process for all bills that the government proposes to introduce in Parliament. Roy i

Minimum need

ights activist noted in her letter to the Congress president, the rupture came over the Manmohan Singh government's refusal to pay statutory minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural employment Guarantee Act - admittedly the largest rights-based safety net programme anywhere in the world. One of the first things the UPA government did upon earning a second term in 2009 was to acknowledge its debt to the aam aadmi by renaming the