The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

KFRI study finds serious health and environmental hazards in some districts Overuse of pesticides in pineapple farming is feared to have caused serious health and environmental hazards in some districts in the State. Overuse of pesticides, herbicides and weedicides has been reported from Kuttikanam in Idukki and the Mundakkayam and Erumeli areas in Kottayam, where pineapple is grown in rubber estates as an intercrop. A field verification study by the Kerala Forest...

Is the government trying to push a new land Acquisition Bill without addressing the concerns of the deprived people who stand to lose their livelihoods? Peoples’ movements and social action groups have charged that the cash-based Haryana and Mayawati models of land acquisition are equally ‘dangerous’ for the landless and the deprived people who get uprooted without compensation or rehabilitation. People’s movements have been demanding that instead of bringing Land...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...

Gowthami limps into the all-women police station in the export hub of Tirupur with tears in her eyes. The 23-year-old mother of a little boy attempted to end her life swallowing a packet of powdered mosquito repellent coil, but miraculously survived. ''I don't want to be alive. My husband says I look like a fat pig... he thrashes me quite often,'' she says. Every day, at least a dozen young...