Ramesh Singh, an Intelligence Bureau officer and resident of Sonepur under Chhapra, has an MNREGA job card bearing registration number 914. Singh had never applied for it, nor did he know about its issuance Uday Kumar Dwivedi, employed in the Indian Navy, is a resident of Jaitiya village under Jahangirpur panchayat of Sonepur, Chhapra. He was also issued a job card (311). He, too, does not know about it and had...

-PTI Union Minister Jairam Ramesh has said 'Aadhaar' numbers, the unique 12-digit identification numbers given to residents of India, would be used to provide different social pensions, MGNREGA wages to workers and scholarships to students. "The Aadhaar-enabled applications would be utilised immediately in some selected 50 districts of the country, where the enrolment covered over 70%," the rural Development Minister told reporters here last night. Over 20 crore people in the country were...

-The Pioneer Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday said the government is proposing a new National Urban Health Mission to focus on the health challenges of people in towns and cities while it would continue the National rural Health Mission (NRHM) for another five years. Delivering his address at the third convocation of the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) here, Singh said: "Our government has decided to continue the...

-Live Mint Realized prices for the farm sector continue to soften even though the government has raised the minimum support prices by over 20% Like every year the government has hiked minimum support prices to help the farmers realize good returns in early June, but India’s rural growth story is expected to run out of steam because of falling realizations of farmers and limited policy support, according to a recent report by...

Weak performance of monsoon this year has led the government to anticipate a significant increase in demand for work under its flagship ruralemployment guarantee scheme. The rural development ministry has asked all states to prepare contingency plans and review their estimates of work demand under Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The move is an indication that the Centre is not very certain of monsoon catching up in the...