Seeking to build on the strengths of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) while, at the same time, eliminating its main deficiencies and shortcomings, the rural development ministry is planning to take UPA government’s flagship project to a new level. A three-day-long workshop of the coordination group attached to the ministry, as also other principal stakeholders, gets underway at the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Rural Development from...

The finance ministry is planning to change the face of banking in the Red corridors at the tribal heartlands of India. The move is part of the government decision to redraw its law and order management and development plans in view of the growing Naxalite menace threatening the Indian state. As the banks, like any other government institutions bear the brunt of Naxalite terror, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is mooting the...

To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme, India could introduce biometric-aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. The government’s initiative comes at a time when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been criticized for leakages. It is the government’s largest social sector spending programme with allocation for this fiscal pegged at Rs40,100 crore. The proposal, which has already been submitted to the government for...

They may be at the bottom of all social indicators but most Naxalite-affected districts have better scores to show in the rural job scheme than areas that are not under the insurgency shadow. The main reason was better implementation, the direct result of the resolve by the state and central governments to counter the influence of the rebels through a development surge. The other reason, rarely stated but tacitly acknowledged, is...

Built into the economic dogma of growth first is the ingrained notion held by large segments of the nation's elite that the fabric of inequality is meant to remain unimpaired.  “The Challenge of Employment in India; An Informal Economy Perspective” sums up the findings of a National Commission set up in September 2004 to review the status of the unorganised/ínformal sector in India (Volume I Main Report and volume II...