The Union government is reneging on its legal obligation to pay minimum wages, even to the most deprived sections of the population, in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. If anyone wants to study the capacity of India's policymakers to turn a progressive piece of legislation upside down, the wage policy under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a good place to...

In order to decentralise the planning, implementation and monitoring processes of the MGNREGA works, the government is planning a national strategic framework using the geographical information system (GIS). The move will help the rural development ministry bring in greater transparency and accountability in the implementation of the act as real time data would be available to it. The use of GIS will help capture existing assets (created under MGNREGA) with their location,...

While promising to release a sum of Rs 500 crore to keep the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) running in West Bengal at the earliest, the team from the Union rural development ministry that met the state panchayat minister today forced the state to frame a policy before disbursing further allotment to the districts under the scheme. The Central team, led by its joint secretary, Mrs Amita Sharma,...

“India is Shining” in many ways, but the major hiccups in the run up to the Commonwealth Games (CWG), which opened on October 3 in New Delhi, highlight India's serious problems. Despite the colourful display of India's arts and culture at the grand opening ceremony, the frantic last minute interventions —including enlisting the Army (who did a remarkable job) to help with the final preparations — reveal the gross inefficiencies...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...