Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight. 

Policy News 

Health and Nutrition 

• For every 100 anganwadi beneficiaries in the country, seven are in urban areas, and 55 lakh out of a total of 7.95 crore beneficiaries (till September 2019) are registered at urban anganwadis, according to a Right to Information response filed by The Hindu newspaper. The reason behind this is a severe lack of anganwadis in cities.

Education

• Rs. 99,300 crore has been allocated to the education sector in Budget 2020, with new schemes targeted at quality education and higher education being launched.

Opinion 

Post Budget 

Avani Kapur takes stock of Budget announcements for the social sector in this piece published in the Deccan Herald.

Pre Budget 

“There is a strong case to be made to strengthen MGNREGS. The demand-driven nature of MGNREGS helps avoid the targeting failures seen in PM-KISAN and other schemes,” write Avani Kapur, Meghna Paul and Vastav Irava in the Hindustan Times. Both schemes will require not only sufficient budgets but also structural improvements to increase coverage and implementation.

In another OpEd in the Hindustan Times, Avani Kapur and Mridusmita Bordoloi focus on early childhood development, and how India’s policies and budget commitments towards “this cohort remain unclear”.

For AI’s complete budget coverage, visit here. You can also download our newly released Budget Briefs that analyse trends on 13 key welfare programmes from here.