Riding on buoyant revenues, the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had for the most part of its first tenure pushed government spending on social sector programmes.
To test the efficacy of the expenditure, the Accountability Initiative of the Centre for Policy Research reviewed the spending, as disclosed in public documents, in four key sectors: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), education, health and drinking water.
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A thrust area of the UPA’s development strategy that seeks to make growth progress more inclusive has been rural development. Within this, NREGS, which guarantees contraseasonal employment, has taken centre stage and is rapidly emerging as a massive social safety net initiative.
Graphics by Rahul Awasthi; Illustrations by Shyamal Banerjee / Mint