| |
 |
|
|
Science Forum Index » Energy Forum » World's biggest public service works in India
Page 1 of 1
|
| Author |
Message |
| habshi |
 Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:22 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
We can combat sea level rises by digging deep one mile lakes
all over the world to hold back the increased river flows. A few
thousand will do the trick.
Also note the Egyptians became super rich and kept their
empire going for 3000 years until monetarists opposing public works
took over and made the country poor. America became rich buidling the
rail and road networks and high defence spending and the moon race.
also flat rate welfare ie paying every citizen a monthly sum
enough to buy food and basic shelter will make the citizens healthier
and more productive. Europe has a better quality of life because of
it.
Note India's pop growth at 1.5% is less than catholic
Phillipin. Even China is still growing 30 years after the one child
policy which means that even if India adopted the one child law its
population will still double to 2b and mass famine and starvation
deaths are inevitable.
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11090635
AMID panic over soaring rice prices and worries about whether
the Philippines, the world's biggest rice importer, can secure enough
supplies, the results of the latest census have diverted blame towards
a perennial culprit: overpopulation. The figures put the population at
almost 89m when the census was taken last August, up from 77m in 2000.
That means it has been growing at just over 2% annually since then.
That rate is below the 2.3% annual growth of the 1990s and the 3% of
the 1960s. But it is still faster than expected. Some analysts think
the census undercounted, especially among poorer Filipinos. The
population may now be up to 93m.
Every hour, then, the country has an extra 200 little mouths to feed.
And increasing numbers of them are being born into grinding poverty.
Other new government figures show that the number of people scraping
by on less than $1 a day has risen by 16% since 2003, to 28m. More
people mean more houses, which means less land to grow crops. The
government this month imposed a temporary ban on building on farmland,
as it revives its attempt to achieve self-sufficiency in rice.
Some senior officials are pressing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
to agree to a big expansion of state-provided contraception and other
family-planning help. But Mrs Arroyo is a devout Catholic and wary of
upsetting the influential bishops. She relies on their grudging
support
.....
excerpt economist.com
The world's biggest public-works project just got bigger. In some
places it is working better than many feared; but by no means
everywhere
OUTSIDE Ajit Pura village, in India's arid state of Rajasthan,
42 women and a man scrape earth into panniers, hoist the panniers to
their heads, and walk the contents up to a low embankment rising on
the edge of the work-site. It is designed to slow the passage of
monsoon flood-water, encouraging more of the precious liquid to
infiltrate Ajit Pura's dusty soil. This should help irrigate just a
few peasant plots for a year or two, before the embankment is washed
away. And yet, modest as that sounds, to some development wonks this
site is revolutionary
To devotees of the scheme, including several fiery campaigners
who helped design it, NREGS is different: above all, because its
provisions are enshrined in the law. Wherever it applies, Indians may
demand employment as their right. If it is not provided within 15
days, they are entitled to receive unemployment benefit. What is more,
many safeguards have been written into the scheme, in an effort to
make it more transparent and less misused than its predecessors. To
exorcise ghost workers, NREGS muster rolls are read aloud at
work-sites each morning. Many of these lists are available online. To
chase away dodgy contractors—a main beneficiary of some works
projects—at least 60% of the funds devoted to NREGS must be spent on
wages for manual labourers.
only a genuinely needy man would be likely to labour under an Indian
sun for 60 rupees ($1.50) a day,In Rajasthan, at least, it is working
well. With its history of public works, and with fairly
well-established local governments to run the scheme, the state last
year came closer to honouring its prescriptions than any other. In the
fiscal year that ended this March, Rajasthan provided an average of 85
days' work to some 2m households, a threefold increase in public-works
employment offered by the state.
Better still, in Rajasthan NREGS employees came mostly from India's
poorest groups: including 19% from dalit (formerly “untouchable”)
castes, and 46% from tribal groups. Nearly 70% were women. Earning 73
rupees for a day's labour—the minimum wage set by the state—they did
better than their sisters working in agriculture. In 2005 the average
agricultural wage for women in Rajasthan was 48 rupees a day.
resident of Ajit Pura, she used to migrate to Punjab and Haryana,
making and hawking plaster statues of Hindu gods. Together, Ms Bawari,
her husband and their ten-year-old son used to earn 50 rupees a day
for this work. Now she earns 73 rupees. Her husband earns 100 rupees
as a farm labourer (happily, local wage-rates have risen, allegedly
because of competition from NREGS). And the couple's three sons are in
school.
That the states' bad behaviour makes NREGS so far neither national nor
guaranteed does at least ease one big concern: its cost. This was
originally projected at $11 billion a year. According to Mr Singh,
however, though NREGS may overshoot its provisional budget of $4
billion this year, it is unlikely to cost more than $6 billion
annually. Its opportunity cost may be another matter. According to a
recent World Bank simulation, more Indian peasants would be withdrawn
from poverty if the government just handed them cash—without first
making them shovel dirt. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| |
|
Page 1 of 1
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:43 pm
|
|