When the National Rural Employment Guarantees Scheme (NREGS) was announced, the idea of having ombudsmen to oversee the rollout of the scheme to prevent corruption was also mooted. Now, when India is in the grip of a furious debate on the appointment of a Lok Pal and his jurisdiction, the concept of a Lok Pal for NREGS appears to have been forgotten. The ombudsmen were to be selected by a committee of...

The Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) — the apex monitoring agency for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) — on Thursday rejected the suggestion of the Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development’s (NCSD) to include providing “skill development” to unskilled wage seekers under the scheme. “While agreeing that skill development was necessary, it was decided that adding the additional feature into the NREGS may not be viable...

-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...

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...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...