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Women’s participation in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) increased by nine percentage points to 57% between 2008-09 and 2016-17. On average across India, 52% of MGNREGS workers during this period were women. However, Kerala recorded 90% women’s participation in the scheme during the same period. IndiaSpend traveled to Kerala to find out why, and discovered that the state’s poverty eradication programme, Kudumbashree, played an enabling role. By helping women find a place in the labour force, MGNREGS has instilled a sense of financial and social security among them.
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Why Muthukanni, A Dalit, Built Her Own Panchayat Office
BY BHANUPRIYA RAO
Locked out of office, barred from hoisting the national flag, bullied, abused and defamed on streets--these are common experiences of women dalit sarpanches in Tamil Nadu. This story uncovers how these leaders deal with the double whammy of caste oppression and patriarchy. Some fight back like Muthukanni, rallying local support, while others struggle to balance the demands of home and politics.
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India is the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, extracting twice as much as China, the world’s most populous country. The largest share of groundwater extracted, 89%, is used for irrigation, dwarfing the 9% used by homes and 2% by industries. Subsidised electricity for farmers, who use it to pump groundwater, is largely to blame, says Tushaar Shah, senior fellow at the International Water Management Institute in Anand, Gujarat. In an interview with IndiaSpend, Shah discusses the need for restricting power subsidies to farmers, and the possibility of increasing farmers’ income by using solar power.
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3 In 4 Loans Under PM’s Scheme For Micro Businesses To Women
BY VIPUL VIVEK
Loans sanctioned for women to start businesses under a national programme launched in 2015-16 fell by 5.8 percentage points by 2016-17, according to government data. Nevertheless, three in four loans sanctioned over the two fiscal years were to women. The programme, called the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, also offers discounted interest rates to women. Puducherry sanctioned the highest number of loans per 1,000 women. How are other states doing, at a time when fewer Indian women are working?
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Better Nutrition In Early Life Could Give India 3.17M More Graduates
BY CHARU BHARI
Nourishing children in their earliest days--from conception to age three--works better than extra nutrition from age three to six in increasing their chance of graduating, completing secondary school, holding a job in early adulthood, and marrying after the age of 25, according to a new study published in the Journal of Nutrition. The researchers estimated a potential to increase the ranks of India’s college graduates from 7.5% of the country’s 73.8 million 20- to 24-year-olds to 11.8%.
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Can Skilling, Job Assurance Make More Women Work?
BY LAVANYA GARG & SNIGDHA SHAHI
The decline in the female labour force participation (FLFP) rate from 36% to 24% in the decade to 2015-16 comes as a surprise in India’s rapidly growing economy. Available data on time use patterns, lack of bargaining power and mobility challenges provide some answers. Good Business Lab, a worker welfare non-profit, has partnered with Shahi Exports, the largest garment export firm in India, to set up rural training centres and offer guaranteed jobs to trainees as part of a randomised control trial to assess whether these interventions could influence the FLFP rate, and whether it could improve women’s status and welfare within their families.
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Have a good governance story that deserves to be featured?
Tell us about it at: samar@indiaspend.org
Sincerely,
Samar Halarnkar
Editor
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