-The Times of India A Reserve Bank of India paper says that the UPA flagship MGNREGA or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, under which a household is assured of 100 days of wages per year in return for working on various rural development, has not actually contributed to the rise in food inflation as generally perceived. Incidently, the Reserve Bank was among the first to point that the...

-The Hindu Panchayat takes uncultivated land on lease for farming ALAPPUZHA (Kerala): Any visitor to Thazhakara grama panchayat in Mavelikara taluk is bound to be welcomed by vast expanses of paddy fields. The local body has scripted a success story by reviving paddy cultivation and vegetable farming on a land that remained barren for around three decades. The panchayat achieved the turnaround by identifying uncultivated land and convincing private landowners to provide such...

-The Times of India MUZAFFARPUR (Bihar): The Union government has started dumping MGNREGA by restricting the expenditure on wages and also limiting the area where this central project is being implemented in the country, said RJD national vice-president and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh here on Sunday, who had launched the project in February 2006 during his tenure as Union minister for rural development in the UPA regime. Talking to the...

-The Indian Express We want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to succeed in his national campaign to tackle the vast problems of the poor in Bharat. But his one-time contractor turned Union minister for rural development is succeeding in making his own prime minister look contradictory and indecisive to the nation and the world. The prime minister talks about constructing toilets and improving sanitation, opening bank accounts for every poor, excluded family,...

-FirstPost.com What compelled a group of leading economists from India and abroad to shoot a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the government's job scheme - the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or NREGA? Is it to speak out against the government's desperation to throttle the scheme or did the economists sense any ulterior motive behind the government's move? A section of prominent Indian economists working out of the country or...