Articles on General Interest

Asset creation in private lands using NREGA: Problems & opportunities

Published by Vivek September 24th, 2009 in NREGA and Social Policy. 0 Comments

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is primarily a programme aimed at creating public assets that would be useful for the society at large. When NREGA was created, it relaxed this principle by allowing projects in private lands of selected marginalised communities including SCs and STs. The Minister for Rural Development is now [...]

What is NREGA-2?

Published by Vivek September 11th, 2009 in NREGA. 0 Comments

The Minister for Rural Development, Mr C P Joshi has announced that he will revamp NREGA with some major changes, and the new scheme of things has been informally labelled “NREGA-2”. News reports have indicated that the new scheme will be unveiled on the birthday of Rajiv Gandhi. As of now the Ministry has not made available for public discussion the set of changes that will be made, but some ideas have been making their way to the media periodically. This article synthesizes these ideas, and provides links to articles debating the so-called NREGA-2.

Zotero: The best citation tool around, and it’s free

Published by Vivek September 7th, 2009 in Research tools: software & utilities and Software & Utilities. 0 Comments

Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface
As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my [...]

Salsa in Madras: Social dance in a conservative city

Published by Vivek September 3rd, 2009 in Fun stuff, Naan fiction and Tamil Nadu. 0 Comments

Madras is one of those conservative cities that likes to keep its boys and girls at a safe distance. Parents clamour to get their children enrolled in colleges that are rather strict about this, and colleges have responded to this with enthusiasm. One famous college made a rule that girls will sit at [...]

Who cares about quality in NREGA?

Published by Vivek August 30th, 2009 in NREGA. 0 Comments

NREGA has been relatively successful in many states in creating a large volume of employment, but critics have pointed out that the quality of projects is often poor. I agree with this assessment and argue that employment tends to be provided since there is a pressure for creating work and paying wages on a timely basis. But there is little pressure for quality from any source, be it administration, social movements or people at large. Unless we get some pressure group for ensuring quality, it is likely that quality of work in NREGA will continue to be poor in the years to come.

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