The finance ministry has offered only a 12% increase in the budgetary support to the central plan for the coming fiscal against the Planning Commission's demand for an 18% hike. The plan panel sought higher support, citing increased requirement for the flagship schemes, particularly MGNREGA, or Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act . The North Block, constrained by its compulsion to return to fiscal consolidation and additional expenditure due...

The government’s biggest welfare programme could see an almost 60 per cent increase in funding. The forthcoming Budget is likely to make a provision of Rs 64,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in 2011-12, against Rs 40,100 crore in the current fiscal. The huge increase in outlay will be mainly on account of two factors: Linking wages under the scheme with the consumer price...

A case of irregularity in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been detected in Karanjakala block of Jaunpur district. Joint director (industry) Indramohan Dubey, in his inspection report submitted to divisional commissioner Ajay Kumar Upadhyaya, mentioned that job cards of workers were not made in Vibi gram sabha of Karanjakala block. Locals told him that they had given applications for this purpose but they were not given job...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a landmark legislation to improve the economic condition of rural mass of India through an assured 100 days of employment per household per year, was initially implemented in West Garo Hill and South Garo Hills districts of Meghalaya in 2006, with much publicity. The scheme emanating from the MGNREGA for providing unskilled manual work for 100 days per household at Rs...