While promising to release a sum of Rs 500 crore to keep the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) running in West Bengal at the earliest, the team from the Union rural development ministry that met the state panchayat minister today forced the state to frame a policy before disbursing further allotment to the districts under the scheme. The Central team, led by its joint secretary, Mrs Amita Sharma,...

The Haryana government Monday warned banks against recovering outstanding loans from the wages earned by people under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Haryana Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary (panchayat and development department) P Raghavendra Rao said that banks, at their own level, could not recover their loan amount out of the monies received by them (banks) for payment as wages to those employed under MGNREGA. Rao said that...

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government believed in inclusive growth and wanted to ensure that the benefits of growth reached every individual across the country, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said here on Saturday. Over the past six-and-a-half years, the UPA government had strived to ensure economic growth, provide employment to people and raise the resources required for implementing poverty alleviation programmes. “We recognise that growth is necessary for sustaining our programmes. At...

‘Under no circumstances the labourers should be paid less than the wage rate' Angry workers returned the Re.1-wages to the government on October 2 Rural Development Ministry considering possibility of paying bonus to workers The Centre has decided to direct the Rajasthan government to pay the admissible wage rate under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) to those workers of Tonk district who were paid a mere pittance of Re....

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, since 2003, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes. In 2008, 16,196 farmers took their own lives, bringing the total number of farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2008 to 199,132. (Significantly, P. Sainath is of the opinion that like all government data, these figures too are unreliable. For when women farmhands kill themselves, their deaths are not enlisted as...