The Sonia-Gandhi led National Advisory Council is pushing to amend the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 to make it more inclusive and include a comprehensive social security package. The council, which met last month, pitched for a security package that would contain health insurance, maternity assistance, a life-cum-disability insurance scheme and a pension plan that it proposed should be provided through a single window backed by an inter-ministerial committee consisting...

The Centre is keen to resolve differences with rights activists over the remuneration under its flagship rural job guarantee scheme, which can potentially save it from paying 7,000 crore in arrears to states that have higher minimum wages.  Wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have risen for all states after the government made adjustments for price rise last month. But despite the revision, the payout is...

-The Telegraph The wage rate under rural job scheme NREGA could soon be brought on a par with the minimum wages for agricultural labourers fixed by states. The Centre is likely to amend the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by incorporating a provision saying the wage cannot be less than the minimum rate for agricultural labourers in a particular state. At present, there are discrepancies between the two. A Karnataka...

MGNREGA is certainly a good idea. But it can’t be allowed to play havoc with farming operations by weaning away labourers during peak season RURAL DEVELOPMENT Minister Jairam Ramesh recently rubbished the need for freezing the flagship rural job scheme MGNREGA during peak agricultural season. Dismissing the possibility, Ramesh had said: “The matter has been examined by the Mihir Shah Committee and rejected.” Knowing that Mihir Shah’s entry into Planning Commission...

The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...