Fixing of minimum wages in the States and under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is set to become a poll issue, at least in Uttar Pradesh. Even as the Ministry of Rural Development is hurrying to revise the wage rate under the MGNREGS next week, its officials are apprehensive that Uttar Pradesh too might revise its minimum farm wages in a couple of days. The officials are keenly watching...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Maximum number of complaints regarding irregularities in MGNREGA from UP
-Press Information Bureau The Centre today informed that the maximum number of complaints regarding irregularities of all types in implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has come from the State of Uttar Pradesh. Out of a total 2574 complaints from different states as on 10.11.2011, Uttar Pradesh alone accounts for 999 complaints. The Minister of State for Rural Development Shri Pradeep Jain informed this in a written...
More »Food Security Bill likely to hurt the poor more
-The Economic Times The Food Security Bill cleared by the Cabinet is likely to hurt the poor more than it helps them. India already has 54.7 million tonnes of rice and wheat lying as stocks with the Centre and the states, 29.7 million tonnes of grain in excess of the buffer stocking norm. Offtake of rice in the current fiscal year has been 74% of the allotment, and that of wheat,...
More »Just 10% beneficiaries of NREGA are poor, if you believe statistics by Devika Banerji
An inconvenient truth? Or yet another case of shoddy data collection by state agencies? The government is scrambling to prove that it is the latter, after data on the UPA's flagship poverty alleviation programme shows that it may not be reaching its intended beneficiaries, those classified in official-speak as below the poverty line (BPL). A recent note circulated to all state departments by the rural development ministry revealed that only...
More »NREGA wages vs minimum wages: PM vs Jairam by Ravish Tiwari
With less than a week left, the UPA government seems to be split on the issue of appealing against the Karnataka High Court’s order stating that wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act have to be fixed as per Minimum Wages Act. The Special Leave Petition challenging the High Court order has to be filed by December 23. But while PM Manmohan Singh and the Finance Ministry are...
More »