The government may soon have to shell out an Unemployment Allowance if it fails to provide jobs to wage seekers under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). “The MGNREGA software will automatically generate the pay order for payment of unemployment allowance to the wage seekers, whose demand for work is not met within 15 days,” said a report of a high-level committee chaired by Plan panel member...

 Worried at the prospect of having to match the arbitrary minimum wage rate fixed by the states, the central government is considering changes in the law to specify a separate wage norms for its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme that is undergoing a complete makeover under minister Jairam Ramesh.  The centre has already contested in the Supreme Court a Karnataka High Court interim order directing it to align wage rates under...

Worried at the prospect of having to match the arbitrary minimum wage rate fixed by the states, the central government is considering changes in the law to specify a separate wage norms for its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme that is undergoing a complete makeover under minister Jairam Ramesh.  The centre has already contested in the Supreme Court a Karnataka High Court interim order directing it to align wage rates under...

-The Business Standard Implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a flagship programme of the Central government to alleviate poverty, has resulted in an increase of up to 20 per cent in the cost of farm production in Karnataka. It has also created a shortage of labour in the agriculture sector in the state. According to a study conducted by the Bangalore-based Institute for Social and Economic Change...

-Live Mint   Never in the history of India has a welfare programme of such scale been launched before. As the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) enters its seventh year, its statistics are staggering. In 2011-12, 37.8 million households were provided employment and 1,208 million persondays of work were generated. In its scale and ambition, the programme is pharaonic. If the programme succeeds in its mission—and that is still a...