A series of social audits in NREGS works in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district led to unearthing of humungous irregularities and filing of FIRs against several government and panchayat officials and release of delayed payments worth crores of rupees to the ordinary NREGS workers (See details/ links below). The irregularities included the use of sub-standard material, non-issuance of job cards or post office passbooks and fudging of account books. The audits were organized...

The recession is a promising moment to expand NREGA with greater emphasis on building social capital in a big way.  Soon after assuming office, the first UPA government took an impressive step for the alleviation of rural poverty by launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was, indeed, a wise move to insulate the programme from the vicissitudes of electoral politics by enacting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

Taking a leaf out of the Andhra Pradesh’s book, Rajasthan Government has decided to institutionalize social audits for effective monitoring and implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). A part of the Ashok Gehlot-led Government’s commitment is to set up a full time Directorate of Social Audits to ensure regular execution of social audits and their follow ups. The new programme is likely to be launched on October...

RTI advocators in Bihar have succeeded in prevailing upon the State Information Commission to impose penalties under The Right to Information Act (RTI Act) on two senior officers of the Madhubani  district administration. On 11th September, 2009 the Bihar Information Commission imposed the maximum penalty permissible under the RTI Act on the Additional District Collector (Apar-Samaharta) and the Circle Officer (Anchal Adhikari) for repeated contraventions of the RTI Act. The Commission...

NEW DELHI: Agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan on Tuesday came down heavily on proposals to import foodgrains to tide over the shortage due to the poor monsoon this year. He said that if only the government had taken adequate measures to modernise foodgrains storage systems, such an eventuality would not have arisen. “The importers lobby would always be there to make profit out of poverty. But the government needs to take...