The definition of poverty has been at the core of discussions and commitments at the international level to address it and, by a logical conclusion, to eradicate it. This intent is the basis for the lofty Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN member-states and international organisations at the beginning of this century. Now, 10 years later, the UN Summit on MDGs in New York last month was meant to...

The Jammu and Kashmir government is going to enhance allocation of funds under NREGA up to 500 crore against the availability of Rs 208 crore for the current fiscal year. This was stated by the minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar in Assembly while replying to supplementaries to a question of Subash Chander Gupta in Legislative Council today. He said the scheme primarily envisages providing employment but also works to create...

Activists at the ongoing mazdoor satyagraha near the Statue Circle here have demanded that the government first initiate action on complaints of anomalies which emerged during the audit of NREGS in the state and thereby set an example of a transparent system before discussing about the virtues of the rural employment scheme at the collectors’ conference here. They handed over a letter to chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Tuesday, pointing out...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has revitalised the rural landscape across the country, stands diminished in the land of its birth, Rajasthan, hijacked and held to ransom by vested interests and stripped of its backbone of an open social audit. As the Andhra experience has shown, there is one ingredient that can bring back its vitality: institutionalising citizen audits. But, is the Rajasthan government up to...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...