Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article reviews the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA), perhaps India's foremost social security scheme, which is in the form of a right for rural households throughout India to work for up to 100 days a year in public works and to be paid the minimum wage for unskilled labourers. It is argued that self‐targeting leads to a more pro‐poor scheme than a cash transfer programme. However, in many states, especially poor states, work for NREGA is shown to be not a right. This is a major aspect of the corruption which gives the scheme a bad name. Also generally disappointing is the value of the assets created by the public works. But it is argued that NREGA is worth salvaging, especially if the example of the best states could be followed more widely. Attention is particularly drawn to the contribution of NREGA to the empowerment of women and scheduled castes and tribes in much of rural India.

In response to R. A. B. Leaper's challenge in the last issue of this journal we present a report which we have just prepared for the BBC North‐East. We believe that a better understanding of the costs of high unemployment to the country is needed to inform decisions on how much we can afford to pay to tackle the problem. In the final section of the paper we show how this evidence can be of value in costing policy options.The last detailed costings of unemployment were published in 1982 for the financial year 1981/82. In February 1982 it appears that a political decision was taken not to publish the latest Treasury estimate updating their 1981 calculations. Since then numerous parliamentary questions on the subject have received very limited answers disputing the validity of the whole exercise.

Offering a comparative perspective, this book examines working poverty - those in work who are still classified as 'poor'. It argues that the growth in numbers of working poor in Europe is due to the transition from a Keynesian Welfare State to a 'post-fordist' model of production