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...

-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...

-Express News Service   Even as irregularities in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have been making headlines, a discrepancy in the scheme was reported from Dumuriput village under Padampur panchayat in Koraput block. Vehicles have been put to use and only a minimum number of job card-holders engaged in the construction work of approach road to the village from the old national highway. The work started a few...

-PTI   The government’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme is innovative and has achieved quite high coverage but faces challenges like uneven implementation across states and “some evidence” of leakage of funds, a new World Bank report says. The study ‘Social Protection for a Changing India’ also says ensuring higher degree of awareness among people about the process of applying for work under the scheme and a strong monitoring and evaluation system...

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...