-The Business Standard More, water levels in the reservoirs of southern India are below the 10-year average at 8.28 billion cubic metres As doubts mount over the impact of El Niño on the southwest monsoon season in 2014, India's preparedness to face a low rainfall situation seems to have improved in the past four-five years. However, there are many gaps to be plugged. For example, although the average water in major reservoirs across...
More »SEARCH RESULT
How not to run a programme-Nirmala Sitharaman
-The Indian Express MGNREGA is beset with failures of planning, execution, monitoring and accountability. This election season, we have seen the BJP seeking the people's mandate on the slogan "sab ka saath, sab ka vikas". The Congress harps primarily on a "we gave you" list. The first in this list is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). The 11th Five Year Plan recognised that 30 crore people lived below the...
More »MGNREGA claims, and facts -Jeh Tirodkar
-The Indian Express Available data suggests the programme has been effective in reducing rural poverty and gender discrimination Nirmala Sitharaman's misinformation (‘How not to run a programme', IE, May 9) on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which employs one in every four Indian rural households every year, is disappointing. Consider these facts. For the first time in over two decades, the increase in rural consumption (a proxy indicator...
More »MNREGA Labourers Complain of Not Receiving Wages
-Outlook Koraput (Odisha): Many labourers engaged under the centrally-sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Scheme in Odisha's Koraput district alleged that 334 of them have not received wages though six months had passed since the end of their work. The labourers from Podai Khodra, Joba, Bagkhodra and Golariguda villages under Boipariguda block's Kathpada panchayat constructed an 8 km road between Mantriambo and Joba. The road work was completed in November 2013. "Each...
More »How NREGA and food security will impact poll outcome in Bihar -Iftikhar Gilani
-DNA Muzaffarpur (Bihar): Some 30 kms away from Bihar's Muzaffarpur, in Moshari block, peasants sit around a common hookah at a village chaupal after an exhausting day. They sign Maithili folk songs and relating stories of Raj Kishore and Tasleemudin, legendary Naxalite leaders who took on local landlords in the 1960s. This region, along with Naxalbari in neighbouring West Bengal, was the centre of bloody clashes, forcing socialist leader Jai Prakash Narayan...
More »