Although MGNREGA has been looked upon with suspicion by the Government, industry as well as the landed farming class for various reasons including inefficiency, leakages, corruption, rise in rural wages, cost escalation etc., a new report reveals that the programme reduced poverty among its participants between 2004-05 and 2011-12 by providing employment. The report entitled Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: A Catalyst for Rural Transformation has estimated that...
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Many degrees of hopelessness in India's villages -Harsh Mander
-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...
More »How loan sharks pull poor farmers into a debt trap -Naheed Ataulla & Anand J
-The Times of India As crops fail, banks don't deliver and the government falters, Mandya's farmers find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous moneylenders Chenne Gowda has a Rs. 4 lakh albatross around his neck. The 55-year-old sugarcane farmer from Chikka maralli village in Pan davapura taluk, Mandya district, took the loan from private moneylenders but has no idea how he'll repay. His crop, on two acres, is wilting in the field...
More »92% rural homes run on less than Rs 10,000 per month -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Giving a more storied picture of rural India, the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) released on Friday says that a staggering 92% of rural households reported their maximum income below Rs 10,000 per month. Nearly three quarters of all rural household said that the income of the highest earning member was Rs 5,000 or less. The SECC was conducted during 2011-12 with some states completing it...
More »The digging-holes myth -Jean Dreze
-The Indian Express The view of MGNREGA as a makeshift work programme is far off the mark. Few social programmes in India are more resented by the corporate sector than the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This is easy to understand, considering that one of the primary aims of the MGNREGA is to empower workers and reduce their dependence on private employers. Naturally, employers see this as a threat...
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