Embarrassed by the debate on whether its suggestion that a human being can live on Rs 32 a day in urban India, the Plan panel has said those who are not really poor should be excluded from being enumerated as being poor.
The demand for cash transfers was highest in Bihar at 54 per cent, followed by 34 per cent in Uttar Pradesh and 22 per cent in Jharkhand, where the access to PDS foodgrain was found limited.
Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has said states would not be allowed to ignore the findings of the social audits notified recently by his ministry on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
As a Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh since 2004, he has been putting all his Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) money in the SHG programmme in the state each year, and continues to do so.
Former managing director of McKinsey & Co, Rajat Gupta, has stepped down as chairperson of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Gupta's resignation comes days before the PHFI executive was to discuss his exit.
An expert committee headed by Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav is giving finishing touches to the proposals.
Pilots working for Air India are divided on the call of a nationwide strike from March 9 by the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), part of the erstwhile Indian Airlines, which has 680 members.
Main difference has been on including people above the poverty line in the Food Security Bill.
The Union Budget for 2011-12 is likely to be a low-key affair for social sector spending, as the government is unlikely to come up with any big-ticket announcement for the sector in the next financial year.
The government's bill for funding the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has risen steeply, due to its decision to revise wage rates under these projects and to link these to the inflation rate.
Government support to Budget 2011-12 - or, gross budgetary support (GBS) - is likely to rise by 18 per cent over last year, taking Planning Commission estimates made at the beginning of the 11th Plan (2007-12). With those estimates, the government has with it resources worth Rs 3.73 lakh crore to fund the Budget for the last year of the Plan.
Estimates say finances to go 268% more than Plan allocation.
With Indian statistics facing heavy criticism from all quarters in recent times, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for coordination of statistical activities in the country and evolving and maintaining statistical standards, will have to explore ways to reduce dependence on outsourced secondary data collection.
"We have suggested a fund for drought or flood, and when our production is hit. The fund will be with the states which the Centre will provide. The implementing agency will be the respective state governments," said K V Thomas, minister of state for agriculture and food.
A labour ministry note sent to the rural development ministry (MoRD) says the minimum wage notified in each state - often higher than the NREGA set one - has to be paid. But MoRD has written to the PMO that the NREGA enactment has clauses that exempt it from all other laws, including the Minimum Wages Act. Hence, MoRD is not legally obliged to pay at any other rate.
The killing on Saturday of Joginder Chaudhury, the assistant general manager of Allied Nippon, the auto parts maker, allegedly stoned to death by angry workers, was the culmination of a battle of nerves for the past two months in which, the workers say, they could take no more.
This is her second intervention, seeking that work done under NREGA be treated as scheduled employment under the Minimum Wages Act.
States may set it higher, not lower; planned link to cost of living.
The Minimum Wages Act will be amended to enact a new centrally set minimum, in the wake of the National Advisory Council's suggestion on asymmetries in this regard between states on payments for work done on schemes under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The fiasco over error-ridden national accounts for the first quarter of the financial year has prompted Anant, who used to teach statistics at Delhi School of Economics, to initiate a documentation of processes. Besides, at the behest of the National Statistical Commission, he has ordered an audit of the methodology of preparing the index of industrial production (IIP).
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