-IANS The Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government will soon move the central government to increase Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) wages to Rs.200 from Rs.136. Unhappy with the central government hiking the wage for the 100-day rural job guarantee programme from Rs.130 to Rs.136 in the state, West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress is planning to take up the issue with New Delhi. "We will soon demand that the central government...

  For women, the NREGA would bring important social gains   Not being an expert on the subject and too lazy to read all the fine print, I do not know the exact allocations under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act this year. But I gather the money has been cut down, largely because the sums allocated last year were not fully used by most states. Maybe there were other considerations...

  MGNREGA, which entitles millions of workers enrolled under it to at least Rs 100 a day for 100 days of work in a year, is undergoing an overhaul based on a set of recommendations of a committee headed by the Planning Commission member Mihir Shah.   Encapsulated in The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 - Operational Guidelines 2012 in what is being called “MGNREGA 2.0”, the recommendations aim for...

Madhubhai Koli of Khambha village in Amreli district worked for 10 days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2009. He was paid Rs 1,000 that were deposited in his account. What is shocking is that Koli died way back in 2006. The much-publicized employment programme of the UPA government reeks of severe corruption in this village of Saurashtra. And, a Right to Information (RTI) application by...

-Live Mint This week marks the completion of six years of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Six years is not a long period of time for any meaningful evaluation of a programme of such nature. However, even within this short period of time, the programme has attracted considerable attention. One part of this is the criticism of how the programme involved considerable leakages, did not create productive...