Documents availed through RTI reveals that the Rural Development minister Shri Nitin Gadkari has ordered to bring drastic changes in the schedule of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which includes changing the labour to material ratio and restricting the implementation of MGNREGA in 1/3rd of backward blocks in India (please click here to access a note on labour-material ratio prepared by People's Action for Employment Guarantee-PAEG). The MoRD has notified the...

-The Hindu   Even villages with higher toilet coverage, and households that had some family members using the toilet did not see any difference in health Is building toilets improving health in India? New evidence has raised troubling questions about India's 25-year strategy of pushing people to use toilets as a way to improve health. In a paper published on Friday morning in the medical journal Lancet, researchers led by Thomas Clasen of the U.S.-based...

-MillenniumPost.in Social activist Aruna Roy has alleged that the Narendra Modi-led NDA government is cutting funds for flagship rural scheme MGNREGA on the sly. The people-friendly rural employment scheme was conceptualised by the National Advisory Council, a quasi-government body under the UPA government, where Roy as a member had played a steering role. The former NAC member levelled strong allegations against rural development minister Nitin Gadkari for diluting MGNREGA by changing the...

-The Indian Express If you are old and single, you are most likely to be a woman living in a rural area. That's the finding from the recently released Census 2011 data on households with people aged 60 years and above. A whopping 72.83 per cent of old people who live alone are women. That's 36.2 lakh old women who live on their own as opposed to 13.5 lakh old men. Of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Overriding objections raised by senior officials, rural development minister Nitin Gadkari has ordered far-reaching changes in the job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) which has provided seasonal work to one in three rural households in the last eight years. Documents obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by activists show file notings by a senior official in the ministry arguing that Gadkari's announcements run contrary to the...