-Hindustan Times The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has witnessed the sharpest year-on-year increase in employment generation in its history in April 2021, government data shows, in a sign that the second Covid wave has caused major reverse migration adding to rural economic distress. According to rural development ministry data, around 22 million households have got work under the job guarantee in the month of April 2021, which is...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-Hindustan Times Studies that measure the contribution of MGNREGS towards improving the adaptive capacity of the beneficiary households have remained few and far between. While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been a valuable employment tool and safety net, as seen in the migrant crisis, its role in building ecosystems resilient to the climate crisis is being increasingly recognised. There is now an urgent need to bring upfront...

-IndiaSpend.com MGNREGS is going beyond its conventional role of acting just as a source of rural employment for women to becoming a platform to place demands for village community work, to negotiate for space and power with gram panchayats and for networking. Jorhat (Assam), Kannur (Kerala) and Bahraich (Uttar Pradesh): What does a job card under the national rural jobs programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), mean for someone? For...

When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...