-Down to Earth Villagers gain employment through the job guarantee scheme, used as a means to revive rural infrastructure like reservoirs, cattle sheds Thirty-one-year-old Ram Ratan was employed as a ‘saksham’ teacher at a government school in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district till March 18, 2020. Ratan was hopeful about his job and — armed with a Masters in psychology and a diploma in guidance and counselling which he completed in February — pursued...
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6 ex-bureaucrats move SC seeking judicial probe into Modi Govt’s ‘gross mismanagement’ of COVID-19, lockdown
-National Herald The plea says the Centre failed to “undertake timely and effective measures for containing transmission of disease within India” despite being notified about the same by WHO in January, 2020. Six retired bureaucrats have moved the Supreme Court seeking an independent inquiry by a Commission appointed under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, into the Central Government's "gross mismanagement" of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, legal news website LiveLaw.in has...
More »Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »COVID-19 rural crisis: Why MGNREGA needs a harder push -Debmalya Nandy
-Down to Earth MGNREGA workers across the country on June 29 staged peaceful demonstration, raised demands for higher benefits and wages The nationwide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) left Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA) workers in the lurch. Thousands such workers, facing an economic crisis, have demanded an increase in the annual guarantee of work to 200 days per person. The workers from across...
More »Utilise MGNREGA to the fullest capacity -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu The scheme should not be diluted in the name of the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan The role of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as a lifeline for the working poor in rural India has been proved once again with the experience of the lockdown. In April and part of May, it was the absence of MGNREGA which accentuated rural distress. The Central government revised lockdown guidelines...
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