-Newsclick.in Funding is not keeping pace with demand, and delays or vanished dues are discouraging job seekers in these times of extreme rural distress. Here is a little known but chilling fact about the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGS: between April and mid-December this year, about 1.28 crore people who demanded jobs were turned back. This refusal to give work has been happening every year but it has increased after the Modi...

-PTI Demands include compensation for drought, increase in MSP Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday assured tribal farmers that their forest land rights claims will be settled by December this year. Fadnavis gave assurance to representatives of the protesting farmers who marched to Azad Maidan here for redressal of their grievances, which include compensation for drought and transfer of forest rights to tribals. A delegation of the protesting tribals met Fadnavis at...

-PTI New Delhi: The Centre today asked state governments to provide home delivery of highly subsidised foodgrains to the PDS beneficiaries to avoid instances of starvation death. These were among other reforms the state governments have been asked to pursue urgently in order to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) — also called ration shops. The matter was discussed in detail with state food ministers meeting here in the national capital. “We...

  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...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...