A 50-year-old labourer, Subal Mahato, was allegedly beaten to death by his employer for demanding revised wages in accordance with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), in Bokaro on Saturday night. According to NREGA Commissioner Ajay Kumar Singh, Mahato, a resident of Bathua village under Chas block in Bokaro district, was one of the nine workers hired to dig a well. The project, sanctioned for 2010-11, was undertaken...

You see those hills?” Jamshed Kanga, an illustrious IAS officer, then divisional commissioner, Pune, asked the noted development economist John Lewis who was visiting him in 1972, pointing to the barren Sahyadri range behind his office. “I will break every one of those if necessary, but will not let a single person starve.” It was the worst drought in the history of independent India, with a monsoon deficit of 25%...

A high-level committee appointed to examine introduction of minimum support price (MSP) for non-timber forest produce has recommended that a central agency be constituted to fix MSP for the produce collected by tribals and the price be fixed keeping in mind wages paid under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), transportation cost, value addition to the produce and local market prices. The committee, which was appointed in August last year...

Altogether 17 workers of Dungarpur district have received unemployment allowance after they were not given work under provisions of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Since implementation of the MGNREGA in the state, this is the second such instance of unemployment allowance payment, widely seen as an assertion of the workers' right under the Act. In 2009, a lone labourer in Bhilwara was paid the allowance after...

The ministry of rural development has demanded a nearly 60% increase in the allocation for its marquee job guarantee scheme in the forthcoming Union budget for fiscal 2011-12. The ministry has sought an allocation of around Rs. 64,000 crore, up from Rs. 41,100 crore, for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a ministry official said, requesting anonymity. MGNREGS, the flagship programme of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government...