-Down to Earth The decision to reinstate Rs. 162 minimum daily wage follows protests and litigation The Bihar government has rolled back its decision to curtail minimum wages for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) beneficiary labourers, even as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have approached the court on the same issue. The decision to reinstate a minimum daily wage of Rs 162 was taken at a cabinet meeting, officials said. The...

-Rising Kashmir Jammu, Apr 14: Despite liberal funding from Government of India for its popular scheme of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), state government has failed to complete 34886 works since its inception from 2007. Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in its report of 2011-12 found that the number of works taken up for execution each year had been very high and the number of incomplete works...

-Down to Earth Budget to start process of reforming Central rural schemes, 45 years after first demand India’s rural development programmes are in for an overhaul. After the approval of the 12th Plan by the National Development Council (NDC) on December 27, 2012, the government has started restructuring of the behemoth called Centrally sponsored schemes (CSSs). In the Plan (2012-17) the Centre has committed Rs 541,276 crore for CSSs covering rural development,...

-Economic and Political Weekly A cost-benefi t analysis by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy of the benefits from Aadhaar integration with seven schemes throws up huge benefi ts that are based almost entirely on unrealistic assumptions. Further, the report does not take into account alternative technologies that could achieve the same or similar savings, possibly at lower cost. Reetika Khera (reetika.khera@gmail.com) is at the Institute of Economic Growth on...

-The Economic Times It was in the mid-eighties that former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said if the Centre released a rupee for the poor, only 15 paisa reached them. Decades later, not much has changed. With leakages, delays, and uneven implementation of welfare schemes like NREGA, blunting benefits to the poor, the rural development ministry is proposing to put in place a system to assess the effectiveness of the schemes even...