-The Indian Express A renewed funding squeeze may undermine MGNREGA’s recent revival, fear civil society activists. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme which guarantees 100 days of wage employment per year to rural households, may have staged a revival in the last two quarters after showing a declining trend in person-days generation during the first year of the Narendra Modi government. But the turnaround could well be temporary,...

-The Times of India Jaipur: An auto rickshaw driver got paper sheets weighing 39 kg in reply to an RTI query he filed seeking information on the 1.5 bigahs of his father's cultivable land that was acquired by Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (RIICO) some 20 years ago in Udaipur's Bhoiyon-ki-pancholi village. The reason was that he suspected foul play as there were others in the village whose land had...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Indian Express Field reports suggest that the mustard crop — currently about 70-90 days old and at the reproductive (flowering and pod development) stage in most areas — is in good condition. Dry weather combined with unwinter-like temperatures — roughly 5 degrees Celsius above normal levels for this time — may not pose immediate worries to the rabi season crops in the fields now. But the real concern is whether...

-Down to Earth The rural development ministry had recently demanded an additional allocation of Rs 5,000 crore to maintain the momentum of MGNREGA Civil society has supported the demand made by the Union Ministry of Rural Development to the Ministry of Finance to provide Rs 5,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MGNREGS). Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the United Progressive Alliance’s employment generation flagship scheme,...