Back in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), now called Mahatma Gandhi NREGS or MGNREGS, was offered as a tool to liberate Dalits and weaker sections in rural India by giving them employment. Five years down the line, a Union Ministry of Rural Development-sponsored investigation has found that the scheme has become “yet another instrument in the consolidation of the existing exploitative power structure”. The investigation report, which became available...

Participating in the second meeting of the Chief Ministers' Working Group on Food and Public Distribution here, Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Wednesday asked the Centre to make the public distribution system (PDS) universal in the Left-Wing Extremism-affected districts, as well as, all Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste families living in tribal areas to do away with “errors of exclusion.” Mr. Singh is a member of the working group, set...

Once lauded as a model state for implementation of MGNREGA — the flagship programme of the UPA government — the state is on the backfoot nowadays as far as the scheme is concerned. Even as the Opposition BJP and the ruling Congress try to extract political mileage out of sarpanches agitation, at stake is the very scheme that has not only reduced the migration of labourers to other states but...

In order to maintain transparency and direct control on the executing agencies in the MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Agency) scheme, district magistrate Sanjay Prasad has ordered for conducting a social audit. He has also deployed about 82 officers for conducting social audits in the rural areas. These officers have also been allotted gram Panchayats where they would conduct social audits. The officers have been instructed to conduct social...

Even as the prime minister protests his inability to distribute food free of cost to the poor, the overflowing food stocks seem set to lead to another year of blockbuster expenditure on the public distribution system. According to numbers from the department of food and public distribution system (PDS), the government spent Rs25,600 crore on food subsidies during just the first four months of the year. The amount — higher than the...