The question raises fundamental issues about the MGNREGA’s centralised template and poor delivery mechanism, but it is important to provide a legal basis to its wage structure to protect it against inflation. We need to remember that the way the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was originally conceived, wages were never meant to be equal to the minimum wages; they should have been lower. This is because the...

So why is the UPA hell-bent on killing its unique success story: the NREGA? Here's the inside narrative of the conspiracy. It took 47 days of a protest sit-in at Jaipur to make the state budge(1). It's notable that the objective of this protracted protest was not to coerce the Rajasthan government for an extra share of the state's resources, but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its...

India could face serious problems in providing food security, if the present gap between the consumption and production of pulses is not filled, according to a report by industry body Assocham. "If the production of pulses in the largest producing nation dips, it becomes difficult for the global markets to fill up the gap," Assocham said in a statement today. India is world's largest producer and consumer of pulses. However, still there...

The government has firmed up an indexing system of minimum wages for various categories of labour to match the inflation after Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure that labourers are paid the minimum wages. The Rural Development Ministry is soon expected to issue a notification detailing the payment of minimum wages to various categories of workers, like industrial labourer or agricultural labourer, in tune with inflation,...

The Indian economy is moving back into the fast lane, with agriculture playing a leading role. A new financial review presented by the government in mid-December anticipated economic growth of up to 9% for the year to March 2011, and forecasters believe double-digit expansion is on the cards for later in the year. "Faster growth is expected to continue as agriculture recovers sharply from last year's drought and inflation starts to...