-The Financial Express What's clear is it has helped few in its current form Activists have come down heavily on rural development minister Nitin Gadkari for attempting to restructure the MGNREGA by, among others, changing the mandatory amount reserved for labour; the number of districts that the scheme is to be used for is also to be reduced to just the needy ones. This has been done, the activists argue, to help...

-The Hindu NSSO urged to use time-use surveys to ascertain homemakers' economically productive activity Close to two out of every three Indian women are, in their prime working years, primarily engaged in unpaid housework, new NSSO data shows. This phenomenon, on the rise over the last decade, is least common in the southern and north-eastern States and most common in the northern States, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in particular. In data released on...

-The Business Standard Alarm bells on rural jobs guarantee law   A group of around 30 economists from India and abroad have written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to ensure there is no dilution or restriction of the provisions of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). They have argued the scheme has wide-ranging social benefits, beside creation of productive assets. They have said corruption was and remains...

Documents availed through RTI reveals that the Rural Development minister Shri Nitin Gadkari has ordered to bring drastic changes in the schedule of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which includes changing the labour to material ratio and restricting the implementation of MGNREGA in 1/3rd of backward blocks in India (please click here to access a note on labour-material ratio prepared by People's Action for Employment Guarantee-PAEG). The MoRD has notified the...

-ABPLive.in New Delhi: A host of activists and academics have appealed to Narendra Modi to nip any move to dilute the 100-day village job scheme after rural development minister Nitin Gadkari brushed aside objections from within his own ministry. In a letter signed by over a hundred citizens, the signatories that included Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Jean Dreze, Harsh Mander, Prabhat Patnaik and Abhijit Sen sought the Prime Minister's "immediate assurance" that...