-The Hindu Business Line Falling farm prices, drying up of industrial jobs and lesser MGNREGA work have sharpened rural discontent. The Budget cannot ignore these factors in a year of 8 State polls The year 2017 was roiled by rural discontent. After two consecutive drought years (2014-15 and 2015-16), when agriculture growth plummeted (see table), the countryside was awash with hope after a good monsoon in 2016-17. However, record foodgrain output (272 million...
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Odisha seeks release of Rs 676.57 crore for MGNREGA wages
-IANS Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday requested the Centre to release Rs 676.57 crore to pay the wages under the MGNREGA scheme till December 2017. In a letter to Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, the Chief Minister sought his intervention for the release of the funds. Patnaik said the Centre was supposed to release Rs 2,290.19 crore to the state by December-end but it had released only Rs...
More »A lifeline, interrupted -Nikhil Dey & Aruna Roy
-The Indian Express Government is prioritising savings over MGNREGA and rights of the poor. Rambeti from Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, graphically described the predicament of MGNREGA workers like her in a recent press conference in Delhi. “The government repeatedly states that it will not let us die of starvation. But the truth is, it does not allow us to live either.” That is a terrible evaluation of MGNREGA — a landmark legislation enacted...
More »With Shifting Accountability on NREGA Payment Delays, Workers Continue to Be Denied Their Due -Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala and Rajesh Golani
-TheWire.in Not only is the government failing to make timely payments, but the Centre’s definition of what constitutes a ‘delay’ is also flawed. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) guarantees 100 days of work in a year for every rural household that demands work. In the current financial year, over 152 crore person days of work has been generated through the programme. The Act mandates that every worker must...
More »NREGA wage payments are being withheld by the Centre, alleges civil society organisations
-Press Note from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha Since the start of the FY 18, we have pointed out the willful misrepresentation of delays in wage payments, incomplete calculation of the full extent of compensation due to workers and the under provisioning of budgets for the program. In August, we released a report by independent researchers, that used the Ministry of Rural Development’s own data to show how the Central Government is deliberately...
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