With the state government finally increasing the minimum wages by 35% from January 1, 2011, the focus of the on-going Mazdoor Haq Yatra in the state is now on increasing the wages under MGNREGA from the current freeze at Rs 100 to meet the minimum wages. Not only activists of the Yatra plan to rake up this issue nationally, but with their prime demands from the state met, the entire focus...
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The mass job guarantee by Aruna Roy & Nachiket Udupa
The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...
More »Let’s build on the positives
Good schemes, like technology, are never future-proof. They need to be tweaked as and when required so that they stay effective. Unfortunately, many feel, this tweaking of the UPA’s flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), is not happening and slowly but surely we are losing the advances that had been made till now. At a press meet recently, rights activists Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy, Nikhil...
More »NAC members blast execution of NREGA, call it 'anti-labour'
Members of the National Advisory Council (NAC) Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze have accused the UPA government of being “increasingly anti-labour” in their assessement of the national rural employment guarantee programme, on its fifth anniversary. With support from several activists associated with the government’s flagship social sector scheme, they have alleged that the “contractor mafia”is increasingly dominating in the states, minimising the potential to create remunerative employment through the programme. According to...
More »States fail on dole for jobless-Unemployment allowance to handful
Only eight states have given the mandatory unemployment allowance to workers registered under the rural employment scheme over the past four years and even that for just a fraction of the time they went jobless. The problem adds to the list of complaints about the Congress-led UPA’s showpiece welfare programme. It has come to light in statistics collated by the Union rural development ministry, which runs the scheme. According to the National...
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