To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme, India could introduce biometric-aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. The government’s initiative comes at a time when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been criticized for leakages. It is the government’s largest social sector spending programme with allocation for this fiscal pegged at Rs40,100 crore. The proposal, which has already been submitted to the government for...

Rural level micro plans will be chalked out for sustainable exploitation of natural resources and making rain-fed agriculture profitable. Under the micro plans, several works of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme will be taken up in an integrated way with the convergence of other government schemes and programmes. This information was given by Principal Secretary R. Parshuram while addressing a workshop at Academy of Administration here today. The...

CUDDALORE: As labour shortage has been “daunting the farm sector,” the Joint Action Council of farmers' associations has appealed to the government to review the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) Scheme that takes away a major chunk of the workforce. The JAC, which met here on Monday , adopted a resolution. It said that besides the vagaries of weather, what was hindering the growth of the farm sector...

The latest report on the progress of millennium development goals (MDG) by the United Nations has said that robust social protection and employment schemes such as India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) reduce poverty and reverse inequality. In its report, ‘What Will it Take to Achieve Millennium Development Goals,' the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has said the MNREGS is known for improving livelihoods through legal guarantee of...

Udupi district is in the last row of order in implementing the provisions of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the entire State.  The issue was surfaced amidst heated arguments in the Udupi Zilla Panchayat general body meet held here on Tuesday. Congress members Raju Poojary and Janardhan Thonse raised the issue and accused that the squad introduced to evaluate the success ratio of the programme, has...