-The Indian Express Mumbai: In case the size of the house exceeds the set limit, the extra cost will be borne by the beneficiary. Taking the idea of the Centre’s rural employment scheme for creating sustainable rural assets a step further, the Maharashtra government is set to dovetail its rural housing scheme with the National Rural Employment Generation Act (NREGA). The final draft housing policy has also brought rural housing under the...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Check dam in a day using plastic sheets -Shree Padre
-CivilSocietyOnline.com Kasargod: In 2000, Pidamale Govinda Bhat, 63, a middle-class areca nut farmer, rigged up an experimental check dam with sand and plastic sheets. For decades, his family had been constructing a temporary check dam across the Okkethoor river with stones and soil to irrigate their farm. “The government constructed a vented dam for us in place of our temporary check dam,” recalls Bhat. “But the sarkari dam leaked and leaked. By...
More »MGNREGA failure adds to Vidarbha’s suicide woes -Kavitha Iyer
-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...
More »India's Rural Jobs Programme: A Dismal Appraisal -Jean Drèze
-HuffingtonPost.in In the backdrop of workers taking to the streets on Labour Day to protest against their status, here is why the government's rural jobs guarantee programme presents an alarming picture today. Declining expenditure Central Government expenditure on NREGA declined from Rs 40,100 crores in 2010-11 to Rs 38,597 crores in 2014-5. In real terms, this means a decline of about 30% over four years. As a ratio of GDP, Central Government expenditure...
More »More power to skilled hands -Laila Tyabji
-The Hindu Handlooms are the one area where India leads the world in skill, creativity and expertise. The Handloom Reservation Act must be strengthened, not repealed Last month, Gajendra Singh, a farmer, hanged himself in New Delhi. His death attracted massive attention as it happened so publicly, in front of the hundreds of people gathered there for Aam Aadmi Party’s rally against the Land Acquisition Bill. Such attention is rare, given that...
More »