One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

For a district feted by the state as the best performer in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme, Aurangabad has perfected the art of graft. For, the Sillod taluka in the district has thrown up a case where nearly 800 tribal migrants, labouring since 2009, have not been paid a single rupee in wages, which have allegedly been siphoned off by the zilla parishad officials in...

-The Times of India   The rural development department has finally made some changes to bail out the district administration in the last month of the current fiscal.  The rural development department has asked the district administration to allow the BDOs and mukhiyas to withdraw fund for the purpose of implementing MGNREGA schemes and for wages of workers. Sources also said withdrawal ofMGNREGA fund has come to a total halt after the panchayat...

MGNREGS figures register a decline in desert State; Haryana forges ahead in the race Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the much talked about flagship programme of the United Progressive Alliance government, losing steam in Rajasthan? Doubts over the credibility of the scheme have sprung up in the State that ironically pioneered the right to employment movement in the country. Today Rajasthan lags behind its neighbour Haryana in...

-PTI The UIDAI's Aadhaar project for providing unique identity numbers to residents, has huge potential to improve the delivery of social sector schemes like rural employment guarantee, the Economic Survey 2011-12 said. "Aadhaar has huge potential for improving operations and delivery of services," the survey said. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), attached to the Planning Commission, is engaged in providing residents in the country a Unique Identification number (called Aadhaar) linked...