Matter begins: What is the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarentee Act on rural wages? That is the question that the pundits are asking today. It's a query which feeds into a larger question. Six years have passed since NREGA became a legal reality. What is its village-level impact? It's a complex question to answer. NREGA undertakes to provide employment to anyone who asks for it. Which makes it...

An uneasy calm prevailed in the troubled Nuagaon panchayat in the proposed Posco project site today as the district administration, different village forest committees and irate villagers reassessed the situation after yesterday’s police action during the felling of trees in the area. The police had resorted to lathicharge yesterday on the members of Sanghaipai Mathsahi village forest committee and land losers at Polang while they were opposing the cutting down of...

New Delhi : Notwithstanding objections by many National Advisory Council (NAC) members to cash transfer-based food subsidy, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) has approved to provide for “cash transfers and food coupons”, among other options, in the proposed food security Bill. The EGoM, which met under Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s chairmanship earlier this week, also approved “leveraging” aadhaar for unique identity numbers for “proper targeting” of food entitlements. Section 31(3)(g) of...

-The Business Standard A panel headed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has advocated the use of unique identification numbers to plug loopholes in the public distribution system (PDS). The working group on PDS reforms, which finalised its draft report today, has also suggested a nationwide computerised system for tracking transportation and distribution of PDS items. “We have approved the draft report and will give it to the Prime Minister...

-The Times of India   Only a handful of officials have read the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee Act. That was admitted by the officials, who attended a review meeting on the national rural employment guarantee scheme on Monday. The meeting was convened in the wake of complaints from the elected representatives during a Karnataka Development Programme (KDP) review meeting on June 27 when it was established that the district...