Maharashtra, pioneer of the employment guarantee scheme 35 years ago, is now the worst performer under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) with the home districts of some of its tallest leaders dragging it down. For instance, Pune, home district of Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, has provided negligible work in the past two years despite strong demand for employment. As per the official figures for the current year,...

Chikkamade Gowda had once told the Centre to give him poison. It was better than being evicted from his forest habitat. That was in 1974. Thirty-seven years on, the Soliga tribal and some 16,500 fellow sufferers are celebrating their homecoming, thanks to a landmark central amendment. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2008, allows them to use nearly 60 per cent of their ancestral land,...

-The Hindustan Times   Rural development Jayant Patil on Tuesday said that implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) should be in the hands of his department instead of the Congress-controlled Water Conservation and Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) department, in the “best interests of the state.” Patil statement comes in the wake of Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh’s missive to chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, stating that the implementation...

-The Hindu   Congress taunts its coalition partner, asks it to first take care of its existing portfolios Sparring over portfolios between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra has begun anew after Union Minister Jairam Ramesh's suggestion that the Rural Development Department implement the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). While the NCP is happy about the suggestion, the Congress — which holds the Water Conservation and Employment Guarantee...

-PTI   Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh today refuted the charge that National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) had caused labour shortage in sectors like agriculture and construction. Ramesh said that there was a deliberate attempt to spread propaganda discrediting NREGA. "The scheme has increased agricultural wages, reduced distressed migration in some parts of the country and created community assets particularly water Conservation structures. Of course, there is room for improvement," the...