Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday promised to usher in more reforms in the scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and increase the number of days of job guaranteed to Below the Poverty Line households. Speaking at a function here to mark the completion of the fifth year of the MGNREGA, Dr. Singh promised to reform the delivery mechanism...
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Resolving the identity crisis by Malia Politzer
When a group of 46 cooks in northern Gujarat—some of whom had been working for up to seven years—demanded full payment for their labour, they were threatened, beaten, then finally thrown out with little more than the clothes they were wearing. The group—which included women and children—were all migrants from a tribal region in southern Rajasthan. They walked for three days without food to get to the nearest train station,...
More »MNREGA fails to curb distress migration in parts of R'than
The government's flagship programme MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Emolyment Guarantee Act) has created a source of additional income for families living below the poverty line in tribal areas of Rajasthan but has failed to check distress migration as minimum 100 days of employment assured under the Act is not provided to all workers. Many villagers in Dungarpur, Udaipur and Rajsamand districts claim that the scheme is mostly attracting women and...
More »Panels propose doubling job scheme workdays by Prashant K Nanda
Two committees of the labour ministry on Wednesday proposed to double the annual 100 days of work guaranteed to the rural poor by India’s marquee welfare programme, but the ministry may pare the suggested increase before putting it up to the cabinet for approval. The provision to provide work for 100 days to at least one member of every rural family under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)...
More »Rural India goes urban by Rajesh Shukla
Most discussions on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) have focused on one of few things, the leakages in the implementation of the scheme, the inadequate number of jobs created, and some even talk of how NREGA has resulted in food inflation going up in various districts as well as increasing mechanisation due to unavailability of farm labour. It is, of course, true that you can’t have food inflation...
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