-The Telegraph The finance ministry has decided to shave Rs 3,000 crore, or about nine per cent, off the rural job guarantee scheme's budget allocation, government sources told The Telegraph. The move comes at a time the NDA government has been trying to assuage the fears of the Opposition and social activists that it plans to dilute the programme, introduced by the UPA government. This year's budget allocation for the programme was Rs...

-IANS New Delhi: The government is not trying to curtail MNREGA and the number of blocks under the act have not been reduced, Rural Development Minister Birender Singh told parliament Thursday. The minister was responding to a calling attention motion in the Rajya Sabha by Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja and others, criticising the move of the government to introduce changes in the rural employment scheme by reducing the...

-The Times of India Over two crore households have been denied work under the fund-starved rural job guarantee scheme in the past eight months. This is a direct result of the deep cuts in funding of the scheme and various other changes initiated by the Modi government. With the employment situation still dire and the new government's long-term efforts to catalyze industrial growth still on the drawing board, the failure of...

-The Hindu Dharmapuri (Tamil Nadu): An emaciated Kumudha looks the very symbol of women who have no reproductive agency or bodily rights, one of the many reasons for the neonatal deaths that occurred at the government hospital here last weekend. A week after losing her two-day-old son to preterm-low birth weight complications, Kumudha just returned home after administration of intravenous fluids at the primary health centre at Palayamapudur, some six km from...

-TheBetterIndia.com Surya Prakash Rai started PRAYOG and created a library in a village in Bihar which has changed lives of over 400 students in many ways. From eliminating the caste system to encouraging students in taking education seriously, read how Surya's efforts are improving the conditions and attitude in rural Bihar. Vijay Kumar Chauhan is a Bihari youth, born to a landless daily-wage-worker family. He migrated to Ludhiana at the young age...