After questions were raised recently on the ''leakages'' in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), another concern – non-payment of salaries to social auditors in Karnataka –might well have broad implications for the programme in the State. For the past six months, the social auditors who are responsible for supervising, guiding, rectifying errors in the programme’s implementation, and motivating people to take up more and jobs under the...

In the light of fact finding report submitted recently by the Union rural development secretary B K Sinha on the rampant corruption and irregularities in the implementation of the projects under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, the Centre has warned the Jharkhand government that it would be compelled to discontinue to release funds for rural job guarantee projects under MGNREGS.. In consequence of Centre’s warning, the state government has decided...

-Express News Service   The best way to save a project is to make its beneficiaries responsible for it. At least that was the idea of the previous LDF Government when it mooted the formation of village-level social audit officers for the transparent implementation of NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) in the state. The new government has also decided to go forward with the idea and has included the formation...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has written to the Manmohan Singh government on the issue of manual scavenging: in a letter dated June 9, it has made out a case once again for a new law to end manual scavenging. The letter points out that in a resolution on October 23, 2010, the NAC had expressed its anguish at the official failure to end manual scavenging in the country...

Recently launched National Rural Livelihood Mission might help the government in getting desired results from its social benefit schemes. Seen as the next big rural project after the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, NRLM will provide a platform for formation of village groups that will then assist in fine-tuning existing government schemes. The government's expectations from NRLM stems from the instances of success in some states that have been able to...