NREGA is a social security measure that aims to ensure livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Started in 2006, for many years, the annual budget allocated to the scheme was frozen around Rs 33,000 crore. States projected an estimated 278 crore person-days of work for this year, which would amount to an estimated cost of Rs 66,000 crore. Even as the Ministry of Rural Development accepted this figure, the budget allocation was increased to Rs 34,000 crore for this financial year. Continue reading
India is the world’s biggest provider of cheap and affordable medicines to the developing world. Of course, most developing countries don’t like that! This debate over global drug pricing is one of the most controversial issues between developed countries and the developing world. While poorer nations maintain they have a moral obligation to make cheaper, generic drugs available to their masses, global pharmaceutical companies claim that the profits they reap are essential to their research. 
Thook, meaning spit, written by Sandeep Shikhar and Iravati Karnik, devised by the Indian Ensemble and directed by Abhishek Majumdar, is a play on food, trade and the prevalence of hunger in India. The play comprises of four short stories bound by a single theme, presented in documentary style. From the Bengal famine of 1943 to the aftermath of neo-liberal economic reforms, the play goes on to depict the one single theme of hunger and poverty in India from different perspectives. 
Yoga is a 27 billion dollar industry. To put it in perspective, it is as big as Tata steel’s assets; and larger than the assets of Infosys, Wipro and TCS put together. And these figures are for the yoga that goes around legally. A lot of what goes in the background never comes out unless someone gets murdered or raped; or skeletons fall out of their closets. 
Socialism did not begin with Marx. It was born while man was still homeless, and lived through the times when people helped each other in building their homes, or farmers helped each other in ploughing their fields. The previous century witnessed the rise and the apparent fall of the political and revolutionary aspect of socialism, or communism. -
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