In the second such case Vyara taluka of Tapi district, a woman sarpanch of Kumbhia village has been accused of forging signatures of NREGS workers and including ghost names of beneficiaries in the roll muster to siphon off Rs 4.18 lakh. A complaint in this connection has been made to Taluka Development Officer and District Development Officer by the aggrieved workers. The fund was meant for construction of roads and three...

The state government on Tuesday assured that it will examine the First Information Report filed for paying extremely low wages to MGNREGA workers in Gudliya village in Tonk district. The FIR had charged six village mates for paying just Re 1 as wages to about 99 workers. However, after protests by members of various organisations during the monthly meeting of NREGA, minister for rural development Bharat Singh assured that the department...

CHHATTISGARH, India, 6 May 2011 – When Pausha Madharia, 16, speaks, she gives voice to the hopes, dreams and fears of every child in the Indian State of Chhattisgarh. Standing before the State Assembly recently, she shared her concerns about child labour, discrimination faced by young girls and the troubles that some students encounter when they’re simply trying to attend school. Pausha told legislators that drunken men sprawled on the road...

The Tatas pulled out of Singur; the Salims of Indonesia out of Nandigram. What is still ticking is the Jindals’ Rs-35,000-crore, 10-million-tonne steel plant at Salboni. It has the potential to churn out the first industrial success story for whoever captures power in West Bengal after May 13. Along with the steel plant, a 1,000-MW power project to is coming up. At one point, Salboni had appeared to have the makings of...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have blamed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) for shortage of labour, which has led to increase in input cost of the products and eating into profit margins. "Now a days there is scarcity of Labourers by 25 to 30 percent in SMEs. There is a high percentage of unskilled labour, which forms the core of employee recruitment in the local small and...