For Union minister C P Joshi the failure to handle the UPA goverment's flagship programme of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA) resulted in his transition from rural development to surface transport. Joshi had not acted on a letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to raise MgNREGA wages and also stood in contempt of an Andhra Pradesh High Court order. Joshi was earlier seen as a trusted man...

In a consultation on minimum wages organized by the Bandhua Mukti Morcha in collaboration with the Planning Commission and NMML in New Delhi on Tuesday and Wednesday , there was overwhelming consensus on the sanctity of Minimum Wages.   Speakers included Justice Shah, Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Sitaram Yechury, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Harish Rawat, Jayati Ghosh, B.D. Sharma, D Raja, Swamy Agnivesh, and Prashant Bhushan Justice Shah established that repeated Supreme Court...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA), a landmark legislation to improve the economic condition of rural mass of India through an assured 100 days of employment per household per year, was initially implemented in West Garo Hill and South Garo Hills districts of Meghalaya in 2006, with much publicity. The scheme emanating from the MgNREGA for providing unskilled manual work for 100 days per household at Rs...

The question raises fundamental issues about the MgNREGA’s centralised template and poor delivery mechanism, but it is important to provide a legal basis to its wage structure to protect it against inflation. We need to remember that the way the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA) was originally conceived, wages were never meant to be equal to the minimum wages; they should have been lower. This is because the...

The social audit of development works under MgNREGA in Todgarh panchayat, Ajmer district asserted and endorsed the Rs 56 lakh embezzlement found by the district administration in a recent enquiry, whose findings were read out at the social audit gram sabha yesterday. It may be recalled that only recently, panchayat resident Bikam Chand Jain who was seeking information  on MgNREGA and other panchayat works in Todgarh had his legs cut...