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...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 751
In Tamil Nadu labourers choosing NREGA over farms?
While the revolutionary National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has brought higher wages for labourers across the country, farmers and landlords in Tamil Nadu have begun to feel the pinch following its huge success. They don't get labourers to work in their fields due to low wages. Will the new choice force landlords to hike wages? Rural Tamil Nadu is witnessing a critical migration of labour. Farm workers, 80% of who...
More »Job scheme-minimum wage link opposed by Ruhi Tewari
The rural development ministry has expressed its reservations on linking wages paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with minimum wages mandated by states for farm labour. In an internal note, which was reviewed by Mint, the ministry said such a step could lead to the states upwardly revising minimum wages for farm labour, an increased burden that the Central government then would have to bear. The ministry,...
More »Child labour, still a common practice in large parts of rural India by Bidisha Fouzdar
In a small pastoral vand (hamlet) in Kutch, Gujarat, 10 year old Ramu wakes up at five in the morning. His mother serves him a hasty breakfast of bajra rotis after which he is packed off to the pasturelands surrounding their small hamlet to graze the family's buffaloes. Since his village does not have a working school, grazing the livestock is gainful employment from the point of view of Ramu's...
More »In Gujarat, e-literate paanwala googles NREGS, stumbles on Rs 1-crore scam
A newly e-literate village paanwala's obsession with Google has blown the lid off a unique NREGS scam in Porbandar. The motley bunch of beneficiaries include affluent NRIs, doctors, government officials, teachers and well-off farmers — all shown as unemployed village labourers holding NREGS job cards. So far, the money siphoned off comes to nearly Rs 1 crore. On paper, there are 963 NREGS job cardholders at Kotda village in Kutiyana taluka...
More »
