The Narendra Modi government’s stated goal of ensuring housing for all by 2022 appears unlikely to be met given the slow pace of construction and delay in expanding the beneficiaries’ list, social activists have told
The Telegraph.
While launching the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) Gramin on April 1, 2016, Modi had gone by the findings of the Socio Economic Caste Census of 2012 and set a target of building 2.95 crore houses by 2022.
However, by 2019, the state governments had identified another 3.67 crore households that lacked houses, raising the scheme’s possible target to 6.62 crore houses.
While a panel formed by the rural development ministry has cleared the additional beneficiaries, the finance ministry has not yet committed funds for the extra houses, preventing the new beneficiaries from being officially added to the list.
Late Justice PB Sawant Played a Stellar Role in Drafting and Campaigning for the RTI Act in India
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The tenacious campaign for the passing of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which was steered by Aruna Roy’s National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) in the 1990s, received great impetus, thanks to justice PB Sawant, who, as chairman of the Press Council of India, insisted on drafting the law. On Monday, at the age of 90, justice Sawant peacefully passed away due to cardiac arrest at his home in Pune.
While the law drafted by him went through a series of updates through several committees later, Nikhil Dey, founder member of NCPRI, says that justice Sawant’s conviction that media must also fight for access to information, spurred him to volunteer to write the first ever draft of the RTI Act. And for that, Justice Sawant took immense efforts to ensure that it was strong enough for citizen’s access to information from public authorities.
Updated: February 15, 2021 1:43 pm IST
In February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Parliament, ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program as a symbol of the policy failures of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh and, in his typical coarse style, taunted that he would bleed the program to a slow death.
Exactly six years later, on February 12, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman rose in Parliament and proudly proclaimed that the Modi government has implemented MGNREGA program the best and incurred the highest expenditure ever in its 15-year history. In her characteristic television debate panelist style, she mocked the Congress party for not being able to match such levels of spending for the program during its tenure in government. Even by the low standards of public rhetoric, the hypocrisy of the Finance Minister was stunning.
Rural India’s lifeline missing from Budget 2021 speech
Updated:
Updated:
February 02, 2021 00:13 IST
Allocations for MGNREGA scheme stood at ₹73,000 crore in 2021-22, higher than the budget estimates for the previous year, but lower than the revised estimates.
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Hard at work: Workers engaged in desilting a dry pond under the MGNREGA scheme in Haryana. | Photo Credit:
V. V. KRISHNAN
Allocations for MGNREGA scheme stood at ₹73,000 crore in 2021-22, higher than the budget estimates for the previous year, but lower than the revised estimates.
The scheme that has been described as the lifeline of rural India during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown was completely missing from the Finance Minister’s Budget speech on Monday.
Press Release - Kisan Sansad | Jan 25, 2021 Press Release - Kisan Sansad | Jan 25, 2021
Friday 29 January 2021
Press Release - Kisan Sansad
The Kisan Sansad, which was held on 23rd and 24th of January, 2021 at the Guru Teg Bahadur Memorial at Singhu, Delhi, had a wide variety of participants from different stakeholders in the agri-policy space. Numerous political representatives from across the spectrum, including very senior people such as H. D. Deve Gowda (former Prime Minister of India), Sonia Gandhi (President, Indian National Congress) and Bhupesh Baghel (current Chief Minister, Chattisgarh) sent their messages. The Kisan Sansad was addressed by senior political leaders of national parties and included Brinda Karat (Politburo Member, CPI-M), Annie Raja (Member, National Executive and National Council, CPI), Jitender Chaudhury (former Minister and MP from Tripura, Joint Secretary, AIKS and national convener of Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch) and two time Rajya Sabha MP Nad