Principal Advisor to Planning Commission Pronab Sen, who is heading a committee on wages, has said states are bound to pay prevailing minimum wages to workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. His view contradicts the stand taken by the rural development ministry, which had said that NREGA exempts itself from other laws including the Minimum Wages Act and hence the Centre is not obliged to reimburse states according to...

The Ministry received 153 complaints of irregularities in the implementation of MGNREGA up to 2007-08; 645 complaints in 2008-09; 528 complaints in 2009-10 and 272 complaints in 2010-11 so far. With a view to make the scheme more accountable, the following steps have been taken by the Ministry:(i) States have been asked to deploy adequate number of dedicated staff with the implementing authorities. Administrative expenses, out of which salary of such...

The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty lungis, were fixed upon him. A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil to rehabilitate farmland. The soil had never arrived, and about $4,000 was missing. The...

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...

After 16 days of intensive Statewide campaigning and 47 days of dharna, thousands of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Rajasthan scored a significant victory. Led by the Suchana Evum Rozgar Ka Abhiyan, they entered into an agreement with the State government under which they would be entitled to the prevailing minimum wage for their day's work. Describing this outcome as “historic,” social activist...