With Assembly elections just about a year away, the Mayawati government seems to have realised the importance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. On Thursday, hundreds of government officers fanned out in around 30 districts of the state for holding special camps to issue jobs card to the poor who have been left out in the past. The holding of camps is part of the campaign which was launched on...

cThe Centre has revised the minimum daily wage under its flagship programme of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for all the states, Haryana government today said. As per this decision, the MGNREGA workers in Haryana would now get daily wage at the rate of Rs 179 with effect from January 1, 2011, a statement quoting Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said here. The revised wage rate of...

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has done what his counterparts in other states failed to do. He convinced the Centre that its policy on disbursement of funds for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) was flawed and needed correction. At a meeting with Plan Panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Kumar pointed out the anomaly, which the government acknowledged and was quick to react. This resulted in...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is showing better success of creating assets — ponds or roads — in the two Left ruled states. BJP-ruled states  Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are laggards, but some Congress states such as Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, too, are at the bottom. “Real successes of MGNREGA is when land resources are regenerated letting lakhs of marginal farmers go back to agriculture — bringing down the need...

The Planning Commission has said that states will have to bear the additional burden if the minimum wages notified by them are higher than that fixed by the Centre for work under the employment guarantee Act. In the case of rich "states that can afford very high minimum wages, the central government reimbursement will be limited", Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters. For a state where minimum wages are...