“We are angry, and upset, and do not want these wages,” says Parmila, an illiterate widow from Chittoriya panchayat in Bihar's Katihar district. Her pithy statement sums up the collective current of emotions running through the minds of the 60-odd women workers of Chittoriya, who were paid wages well below the minimum for a six-day work completed in January. As many as 123 workers from Chittoriya, half of them women, were paid...
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Guaranteeing unemployment
It is true that, at 119 crore person-days, the employment created this year by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), the government’s flagship programme, is tiny, a fraction of one percentage point of the total employment in the country. But a more meaningful way of looking at its potential impact, however, is to see that around half the country’s workforce has registered for a job under it...
More »Bank at your doorstep
Technology is helping public sector banks find customers in rural India. This is part of the Centre’s efforts to include villages in the organized financial system; to ensure they are not cheated of their wages. Pilots show promise The current state of rural banking in the country is poor. A recent report, by the National Sample Survey Organization, revealed that 51.4 per cent of the 89.3 million total farmer households in...
More »MGNREGS: State says ‘no’ to NGOs by NJ Nair
Says conditions cited by the Centre are not applicable to the State State fears it will affect flexibility of schemes Contends that workers do not need intermediaries THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State government is understood to have expressed to the Centre its reservations about the move to rope in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the State. Official sources told The Hindu here that the State...
More »NREGA schemes check villagers’ exodus to cities by Ruhi Tewari
In Danta village, 15km from Bhilwara city, 30-odd women start filing in at 8.30 am daily to resume work on building a concrete water reservoir. The women are among the 2,000 people in the village who have got work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) since the scheme, promising 100 days of work a year to one adult member of every rural family, was launched two years ago...
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