Rural Development Ministry seeks to give the scheme a base Disregarding apprehensions sounded by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, the Ministry of Rural Development will press ahead with its pilot project to link payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with the Aadhaar number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India in a bid to give the scheme, which is currently stuck, a base. In Ramgarh district,...

-India Today   Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh's pet land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Bill, 2011 has run into major roadblocks in the parliamentary standing committee. Various stakeholders, including farmers' organisations, NGOs and legal experts contend that in its present form, the Bill is an empty shell that exempts 90 per cent major development projects - highways, nuclear plants, mines, SEZs et al-in the name of which, land is being acquired across...

Good sections of Rural India don’t want NREGA any more, showing the government spending pattern on the scheme. Since a large percentage of the village labourers have moved to the cities, it makes far better sense to develop an unemployment dole for them. The subtext is an accounting arrangement that ensures that like NREGA, the government can keep on rolling out similar entitlement programmes like the proposed Food Security Act, but...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has proposed social audits for the centre's big-ticket welfare programmes running under different ministries, on the lines of the scrutiny that he recently mandated for the flagship rural jobs scheme. "The concept has the potential to revolutionise the system. If we can have social audits for three-four major social sector schemes, it will change the way the country functions," Ramesh said. If the proposal is...

Lack of trained manpower main hurdle, says health secretary More than a year after rolling out the national programme for prevention and control of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and stroke, the Union Ministry of health and family welfare is still struggling to kick-start cancer screening in the district hospitals in the country. Health secretary P K Pradhan says lack of trained manpower is the biggest hurdle in starting the screening for different...