-Scroll.in Inability of local officials and infrastructure to cope with the complex technologies driving the scheme could be leaving lakhs of workers unpaid. This year’s Economic Survey lists several “improvements” in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act brought about since 2014-’15. Mostly, these “improvements” are technological initiatives – greater convergence with other programmes, “geo-tagging” of MNREGA assets. They have not made a difference on two of the stated purposes – timely...

  Protesting social activists at Jantar Mantar (Delhi), who are fighting for better working conditions of MGNREGA workers, have recently shot off two demand letters – one addressed to the Finance Minister of India and the other to the Secretary of Department of Rural Development at the MoRD. The letter addressed to the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley, dated 13 September, 2017, has been signed by eminent activists including Nikhil Dey,...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: Once bitten, the Yogi Adityanath administration acted fast when reports came of mass baby deaths at a hospital in Farrukhabad that had allegedly failed to administer oxygen to them, registering an FIR against two senior doctors. But the decision, on the basis of a probe by a "non-technical team" of civil servants, has prompted government doctors in the western district to strike work till Wednesday and threaten mass resignation...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the chairman and managing director of biotechnology company Biocon, today said incidents like the Gorakhpur hospital child deaths should trigger the debate "why we spend only 1 per cent of our GDP on health care". Mazumdar-Shaw, who was awarded DSc (honoris causa) by Presidency University, said: "A very, very worrying trend in India is that we spend only 1 per cent of our GDP on health care....

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Four in every five workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act do not get wages on time because of "flawed guidelines", a study released today found. Although the 100-day job scheme provides for payment of compensation of 0.05 per cent of the unpaid wages per day for the period of delay, nearly 33 per cent of the workers do not get any compensation while 47...