-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-Tehelka Bureau Though well-meaning, the new Land Acquisition Act is far from being a perfect legislation. But the urgency to amend a law even before a real field test signals a larger agenda. By all counts, this was expected. Long before he became the BJP and subsequently the nation's chosen one, Narendra Modi had made it clear that his model of development gains from the ease of doing business. Then, days ahead...

-Down to Earth Panel headed by economists S Mahendra Dev also recommends linking wages to Consumer Price Index-Rural as cushion against inflation A committee of experts set up by the Union rural development ministry has recommended that the wages paid to unskilled agricultural labourers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) should be the minimum wage fixed by the respective state or the current wage as per the consumer...

-Deccan Herald The Green Revolution has changed life in Indian villages, but the main beneficiaries were the landlords. Daily labourers remain poor and marginalised. The limits of using ever more fertiliser and pesticides are becoming apparent. Many farmers are confused because extension services want them to reconsider practices they were told to abandon not that long ago. A member of the Santal tribe, an Adivasi community, assesses things from the village perspective. Since independence...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Sanitation projects to reduce open defecation, increasing green cover and emphasis on creating assets form the crux of the Narendra Modi-led government's blueprint for redeploying UPA's flagship social sector programme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA. Top officials aware of the government's re-orientation roadmap for the rural employment guarantee scheme, being steered by rural development minister Nitin Gadkari, told ET that assessment...