-NDTV.com In February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Parliament, ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program as a symbol of the policy failures of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh and, in his typical coarse style, taunted that he would bleed the program to a slow death. Exactly six years later, on February 12, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala...
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No better scheme than NREGS for sustainable livelihood of unskilled workers: House panel
-The Telegraph The committee said, “The absence of reliable and authentic data/information on the numbers of migrant workforce and their movement back to their home States following the outbreak of the Pandemic has apparently impacted the relief and rehabilitation measures.” Commending the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a parliamentary standing committee has said that there is no “better scheme” to provide “sustainable livelihood” to unskilled workers. The Standing Committee on Labour, headed by...
More »Budget 2021 Is a Chance to Undo the COVID-Induced Inequality That Has Surged Across India -Nikhil Dey
-TheWire.in Ideally, the government should increase the work entitlement for MGNREGA to at least 150 days, double the budget and put in place an urban employment guarantee act. Let’s start with those who did well over the last 10 months. The Sensex index crossed the 50,000 benchmark for the first time on January 21, 2021, with a whopping 70% increase since April 2020. The Oxfam inequality report, just released, gives an idea of...
More »Meghalaya woman faces social boycott for ‘exposing’ MGNREGA graft -Prasanta Mazumdar
-The New Indian Express She said she started facing the social boycott from the time she had lodged a complaint alleging corruption in MGNREGA implementation. GUWAHATI: A woman in Meghalaya alleged she was facing a social boycott in her village for “exposing” corruption in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Thrina Suchen, who hails from East Jaintia Hills, alleged that the village authorities had on November 30...
More »In rural India, over-reliance on digital technology has worsen financial exclusion -Rajendran Narayanan and Sakina Dhorajiwala
-The Indian Express A technological intervention must have a governance framework in which protection of rights must be fundamental and which provides more choices to the marginalised. Remember the early days of the internet, when it took several minutes to connect to the web through a dial-in modem? Or when you had to wait in line at an STD booth to make an outstation call? Since then, we have made massive strides...
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