In order to decentralise the planning, implementation and monitoring processes of the MGNREGA works, the government is planning a national strategic framework using the geographical information system (GIS). The move will help the rural development ministry bring in greater transparency and accountability in the implementation of the act as real time data would be available to it. The use of GIS will help capture existing assets (created under MGNREGA) with their location,...

In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has revitalised the rural landscape across the country, stands diminished in the land of its birth, Rajasthan, hijacked and held to ransom by vested interests and stripped of its backbone of an open social audit. As the Andhra experience has shown, there is one ingredient that can bring back its vitality: institutionalising citizen audits. But, is the Rajasthan government up to...

Physical access to schooling and socio-cultural difference between children from scheduled tribes and children from the mainstream are factors responsible for tribal children being deprived of basic education, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, will not necessarily help the tribal population of the country, reveals a recent study. A study, carried out by S N Tripathi of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics...

Good schemes, like technology, are never future-proof. They need to be tweaked as and when required so that they stay effective. Unfortunately, many feel, this tweaking of the UPA’s flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), is not happening and slowly but surely we are losing the advances that had been made till now. At a press meet recently, rights activists Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy, Nikhil...