-The Hindustan Times If the news reports doing the rounds are to be believed, the NDA is planning to further dilute the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the country's single-largest flagship programme that has a budget of Rs. 34,000 crore for 2014-15. While most governments when they come to power do tinker with schemes launched by their predecessors - the MGNREGA was the UPA's pet scheme - this...

-The Indian Express As leading economists urged the Prime Minister not to dilute the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme saying it provides economic security to millions, Union Minister for Rural Development Nitin Gadkari justified the Centre's decision to restrict the focus of the job scheme to the "most backward and needy" districts and reduce the labour-material ratio from 60:40 to 51:49. Denying any move to reduce compensation for lack of...

-The Hindu Chennai: Several leading economists have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act amid apprehensions that the government might restrict the programme and not offer it adequate support. In a letter to Mr. Modi, Dilip Abreu, Pranab Bardhan, V. Bhaskar, Ashwini Deshpande, Jean Dreze, Maitreesh Ghatak, Jayati Ghosh, Dilip Mookherjee, R. Nagaraj, Debraj Ray and others argued that despite numerous hurdles,...

-The Business Standard Alarm bells on rural jobs guarantee law   A group of around 30 economists from India and abroad have written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to ensure there is no dilution or restriction of the provisions of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). They have argued the scheme has wide-ranging social benefits, beside creation of Productive Assets. They have said corruption was and remains...

-The Financial Express What's clear is it has helped few in its current form Activists have come down heavily on rural development minister Nitin Gadkari for attempting to restructure the MGNREGA by, among others, changing the mandatory amount reserved for labour; the number of districts that the scheme is to be used for is also to be reduced to just the needy ones. This has been done, the activists argue, to help...