-The Asian Age   With several controversies emerging that the funds released for the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) being utilised for other purposes by many state governments, the Haryana government has on Sunday made MGNREGS Fund Act to check the proper and dedicated utilisation of the funds. As per the new notification to this effect, issued by the rural development department, Haryana, funds received from the Union government and...

The huge expenditure on the food bill, with the attendant leakages, could well make fiscal recovery impossible In the first part of this article, we have estimated the actual cost of implementing the food security bill in its current form. In this part, we now examine the fiscal sustainability of the same. The current state of the revenue and expenditure trends of the Central government (refer table) show that while revenue...

Discovery of a deadly form of TB in a Mumbai hospital  underscores mismanagement In December last, when doctors at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai raised the alarm over a deadly form of tuberculosis, the Union health ministry was quick to refute the claim. In its press release on January 17, the ministry said the term “totally drug resistant TB” is “misleading”; it is neither recognised by the national programme for TB control...

It is getting harder for jobseekers to return to gainful employment and for new entrants to find adequate jobs, says the ILO. THERE is little in the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) annual projection of job growth to cheer about. The year 2012 has been described as a year of stark reality. A third of the global workforce is currently unemployed or poor; that is, 200 million members of the 3.3-billion-strong global...

As minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh oversees the largest spending in the social sector by the government. This includes the marquee Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that was pioneered by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2006. The minister, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for his forthrightness. In a typically candid interview to Mint on...