-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: The Opposition on Wednesday accused the state government of perpetrating irregularities in the centrally-sponsored rural job guarantee scheme leading to embezzlement of an alleged 50% of the money earmarked for expenditure. Panchayati Raj minister Kalpataru Das rejected the allegations, saying Odisha was faring better than most states in implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme launched in 2005. He said so far 100.33 lakh families...

-The Business Standard Implement it with watershed development schemes to alleviate poverty The United Progressive Alliance government appears to be upbeat regarding the prospects of its flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which provides a universal, self-targeting guarantee of 100 days of employment to every household in all rural districts of India. “MGNREGA has tremendous potential to increase agricultural production, which we have not been able to...

-The Telegraph The world lauds us as the largest democracy. Yet, how much of a democracy are we and where must we improve? Elections and their consequences: We have regular elections. They are supervised with increasing effectiveness as far as booth capturing, bogus voters and violence are concerned. The influence of money has not waned; if anything, it has increased. It is not as it used to be, for paying voters only....

-New Indian Express Bhubaneswar: The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) has expressed deep concern over the issue of migration of tribals to states like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu due to poor implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) Programme in Odisha. The number of tribal beneficiaries of MGNREGA in the State has reduced by half in 2011-12 in comparison to that of 2010-11. As a result, tribals from...

-The Hindustan Times Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has taken his wrangle with finance minister P Chidambaram and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar over the Centre's job guarantee programme to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's court. Stung by their repeated assertions that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) schemes were having a negative impact on the availability of farm labour, Ramesh shot a note to the PM to "respond to the concerns raised by...