-The Telegraph A total of 16,71,724 rural families were provided livelihood by connecting them with Sakhi Mandals during the Covid pandemic between 2020 and 2021 Jamshedpur: There has been a five-fold increase in the number of rural families connected to livelihood projects of the Jharkhand government in the last three years of the Hemant Soren-led JMM-Congress-RJD alliance government.  According to data shared by the state public relation department on Tuesday evening, between 2012...

-Hindustan Times PM Modi had expressed concerns that the utilisation of the funds earmarked for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was skewed in favour of more affluent states instead of poorer states getting more money, two senior officials said, asking not to be named. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged key discrepancies in the jobs guarantee scheme at a recent review meeting on the rural sector, the central...

-Business Standard The budgetary allocation for MGNREGS has already been exhausted, if pending liabilities for the financial year are included Demand for work under India’s biggest anti-poverty scheme increased to a four-month high in November, government data showed as budgetary support for it is almost exhausted this financial year. More than 22.5 million people applied for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in November, the highest since August....

-The Hindu Poorer States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar haven’t been able to use the scheme optimally to alleviate poverty, while economically better-off States like Kerala use it as an asset creation tool, say officials The Central government has constituted a committee to review the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, especially to assess the programme’s efficacy as a poverty alleviation tool. The committee, headed by former...

-The Tribune Armed conflicts afflicting many parts of the world have taken a huge toll on global poverty eradication programmes, humanitarian assistance and relief provided by the aid agencies. Multilateral development banks and large aid agencies need to play enhanced roles in providing funds to eradicate multidimensional poverty. India needs to hold more vigorous drives to achieve the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals — to end all forms of...