-DNA   The ruling BJP-led coalition partner AJSU party today took strong exception to Centre's reported decision to hold back funds under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Ac (MGNREGA) for Latehar and Bokaro, saying it would hit the poor who get guaranteed employment under the central act. "Funds for any welfare schemes should not be blocked as it affects the livelihood of several people. And not releasing fund under MGNREGA to the...

The awareness of the Centre's ambitious rural job scheme — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) — varies across different regions of the State and only 56.33 per cent of the households are aware of the scheme. Evaluation of the impact of the processes in the MNREGA in Karnataka (2011), conducted by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, for the State Government reveals that there have...

-Express News Service   A team of 13 research scholars from the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, IISc, will now conduct environmental service enhancement assessments at the national level starting from June. These scholars have conducted a study on environmental service enhancement and conservation and vulnerability reduction at Chitradurga district. "Talks are on to start the assessment by the last week of June at Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya. Discussions are...

The first-ever comprehensive review of India's anti-poverty schemes has found that schemes like the MGNREGS that do not specifically seek to identify the poor are most successful in actually covering them. This is a significant finding given that many in the government have been arguing for the opposite — more rigorous external targeting — ahead of the 2011 BPL census. The World Bank on Wednesday released a review of centrally-sponsored social...

The Centre has held back Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds earmarked for Latehar and Bokaro in light of recent murders of a labourer and activist, but agreed to release dues for 2011-12 fiscal for other districts of Jharkhand, a state already under the scanner for poor implementation of the flagship job scheme. State MGNREGS commissioner Ajoy Kumar Singh, who is in Delhi to pursue the matter, told The...