'The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine may have achieved new heights for the Bharatiya Janata Party electorally, but it has presided over an unbelievable level of mediocrity on all other fronts. The Modi government’s monumental HR crisis is beginning to show. From a sagging economy to foot-in-the-mouth ministers to an uninspiring cabinet, the BJP government’s bench-strength is abysmal in most parts, and in the remaining, just about average...
'As Jharkhand votes – in five phases from 30 November to December 20 and results on December 23 – to elect a new government, some of the state’s poorest citizens cannot access food grains due to a drive between 2014 and 2018 to weed out fake beneficiaries from the PDS. The solution has entailed a dependence on technology that shuts out beneficiaries, sometimes illegally... Of the state’s 33 million people, 71% or 23.3 million, are directly dependent on the PDS system. In the past five years, the PDS system has often failed the state’s most vulnerable.
'In June 2019, we conducted a survey of 706 mothers in one district each in six states of India. We found serious concerns with the implementation of the Modi government’s Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. The scheme gives monetary assistance of Rs 5,000 to pregnant women in three instalments for the birth of their first child. The assistance is lower than the Rs 6,000 entitlement for all births, not just the first child, under the National Food Security Act, 2013. Even this reduced amount often fails to reach the women.
'Till October 2019, over 2.5 crore applicant households were turned back when they sought work under the rural job guarantee scheme... It would have seemed natural – indeed, imperative – that, as India grapples with a deadly slowdown, with agricultural economy growing only at around 2% and rural joblessness hovering at a shocking 8%, the government would infuse some energy in the implementation of the rural jobs guarantee scheme (MGNREGA).
'Claimants are given a 12-digit number linked to their data, and if something goes wrong they can be refused food... Motka Manjhi had been back and forth to the ration shop four or five times, his wife said, but on each occasion he returned empty-handed. His thumbprint, needed to prove his identity, wasn’t registering on the new system.
'...Travelling hundreds of kilometres to different corners of Bihar this election, I met many voters expressing disenchantment with the Modi government. Referendum is a strong word, but voters were clear in judging the BJP’s campaign with its performance so far at the centre. Voters complained, most of all, of food inflation. Thanks to falling oil prices, overall inflation has been under control since Modi became India’s prime minister. But rising prices of certain food products have pushed the retail inflation higher in the last few months.
'From inflation to social sector spending to reforms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the Delhi Economic Conclave has proved that Truth is dead... Truth would have also gone on to point to the soaring prices of pulses (with arhar dal selling at an unprecedented Rs. 200 a kg). Imagine that? Truth would have also dared to talk about what an ASSOCHAM report said (the report said that prices of brinjal, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes have become much costlier, while the prices of fruits have increased by 40-45 per cent).
New Delhi, 2 March 2015: The Union Budget of 2015-16, the BJP government’s first full budget, has a sense of triumphalism that it ‘can fly’ because it believes that , the ‘opportunity for this exist because we (the BJP government) have created it’ over the last nine-and-a-half months. This government is taking credit for conditions and circumstances that it has nothing to do with or did not, in the remotest way, have the ability or opportunity to contribute to.
"Union Minister of Rural Development Nitin Gadkari has proposed that the MGNREGS be restricted to only tribal and poor areas and the permissible labour to material ratio of expenses be changed from the current 60:40 to 51:49. While the first proposal is being opposed by political parties, who think it will dilute the scheme’s universal employment guarantee, there has been less discussion on the second proposal even though its rationale is not matched by evidence.
Several people’s organizations — the Pension Parishad, the Right to Food Campaign, and the Rashtriya Mazdoor Adhikar Morcha, the Jal Swasthya Abhiyan and the National Alliance for People’s Movements — have come together to hold a public hearing on issues affecting the poor and the marginalized against the backdrop of their belief that neoliberal onslaught under the new government in Delhi has intensified, and there is a growing trend towards privatization and weakening of public services.
