Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to route Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) wage payments through bank accounts, doing away with the practice of cash payment to workers. In a letter to Ms. Jayalalithaa, he said Tamil Nadu could become a trend-setter in seamless transfer of funds through bank and postal accounts of workers and thereby deepen financial inclusion in the...
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NREGA Lines Pockets. Not of the Poor by Abhishek Bhalla
JANGU, 40, a Dalit labourer in Paraspur village in Gonda district, 120 km northeast of Lucknow, displays his job card in complete disbelief. “My job card was made three years ago and shows three payments. But I was never given any work, so how was the payment made?” he asks, puzzled. The first entry shows a payment of Rs 1,400 but he received a paltry Rs 100. He never went...
More »MGNREGA triggers farm labour shortage during agri season: Pawar
-PTI Studies suggest that MGNREGA has triggered shortage of labour for agricultural operations like sowing and harvesting in the key agri states and has also pushed up general wage level, Parliament was informed today. These were the findings of state-level studies conducted by Agro Economic Research Centres under the Ministry of Agriculture, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. The studies were conducted in Karnataka,...
More »Don't blame MGNREGA by Shubhashis Gangopadhyay
Those who see a direct link between wage inflation and the employment guarantee scheme need to think again Rural wage rates have been rising at quite a fast rate in recent months. Farmers have been complaining about their inability to get cheap labour for their farms. Industry, too, has raised the alarm saying that this is squeezing their margins; higher rural wages mean fewer people are willing to work on construction...
More »NREGA leaves textile, handloom sectors gasping by Seema Sindhu
UPA’s much-publicised scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is not creating labour shortage for agriculture and dairy production alone, but the textile and handloom sectors are also facing the heat on this count. A Working Group report on textile and handloom sectors has noted that the scheme was drawing skilled weavers to ‘unskilled’ MGNREGA. It says that high-end weavers are sticking to the profession, but low-end weavers are...
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