One of the salient features of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) is that there are provisions in it to ensure transparency and accountability. Section 17(2) of the MGNREGA says that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat (GP). In addition to that, Section 17(3) of the MGNREGA states that the GP shall make...
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'Digital India' Actually Made MGNREGA Less Transparent -Nikhil Shenoy
-TheWire.in The MGNREGA website used to be something of a gold standard on information dissemination. But not anymore. Sanjay Sahni is an anti-corruption activist from Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Formally educated only till Class 5, he used to work as an electrician in Delhi until 2012. He came across the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) website by chance, and after several hours of navigating through the complicated web pages, he saw...
More »The challenges of making public policy -Tadit Kundu
-Livemint.com Jean Drèze’s new book of essays defends action-oriented research, especially in the field of development economics Designing government policy to eradicate corruption is not easy. As the “demonetization” exercise demonstrated, such earnest endeavours can have big and unintended consequences and they often might not proceed according to plan. Although not concerning itself with demonetization, a new book by economist Jean Drèze delves into the challenges of making public policy for India....
More »Job scheme funds frozen -ASRP Mukesh
-The Telegraph Ranchi: Over six lakh people engaged in jobs under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Jharkhand have not got their daily wages since September 15, the backlog on Tuesday standing at an estimated Rs 155 crores, making it a dim Diwali for the state's poorest. The onus of this lies on Jharkhand as the Centre has withheld funds as the state government has not yet handed...
More »Too good to be true: How MNREGA 'improvements' are actually costing workers their wages -Ankita Aggarwal
-Scroll.in Inability of local officials and infrastructure to cope with the complex technologies driving the scheme could be leaving lakhs of workers unpaid. This year’s Economic Survey lists several “improvements” in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act brought about since 2014-’15. Mostly, these “improvements” are technological initiatives – greater convergence with other programmes, “geo-tagging” of MNREGA assets. They have not made a difference on two of the stated purposes – timely...
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