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...
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Why did Vypari Bai die? by Kalpana Sharma
Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities... This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand...
More »Father struggles to get NREGA wages, son dies in hospital by Supriya Sharma
A week after he lost his ailing son, and ten months after he worked on a village road project, Pitbasu Bhoi finally got the ten thousand rupees he had earned under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Program (MNREGA). "Of what use is the money now? I have just immersed my son's ashes. When I needed the money to save his life, I did not have it," says Bhoi. The...
More »Maximum Dithering for Minimum Wages!
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...
More »Deshmukh to look into delinking NREGA from wages Act
Senior Congress leader Vilasrao Deshmukh, who took charge today as the Union rural development minister, said he would look into the controversy over delinking the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the government’s largest rural employment programme, from the Minimum Wages Act. “I have to go into the matter, as I am not aware of the ministry’s position and the court rulings in the matter so far,” he said. Yesterday, former Supreme...
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