The Congress today said activists and NGOs did not have a monopoly over the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Former Congress MP from Gujarat, Madhusudan Mistry, said activists had no business questioning the credibility of politicians like him on NREGA. He was referring to a note circulated by Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze at a meeting of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) last month. The note referred to a...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

While there is all-round concern about how the NREGA funds are being utilised at the grass-roots level, the Union rural development ministry has initiated the process of inducting technology to streamline the delivery system under NREGA. This will have a revolutionary impact on programme delivery. With about 50 million people working on site in 2,50,000 panchayats all across the country, the magnitude of the task is daunting. However, once the initial...

Bhaggu, 65, says he can trace his memory back to when he was five. And he remembers the paradox that’s taunted him since: Of his village — Sohras, in northern Uttar Pradesh — being flooded every year and him having no water to drink. “They (government) distribute food, tarpaulin, kerosene, matchboxes but never made any arrangement for water,” says Bhaggu, a farm worker who goes by one name. “I think no...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...