Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the landmark National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (later rechristened the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA). At a time when the country is debating the contours of similar landmark legislation for food security (the National Food Security Act), it is time to evaluate the working of MGNREGA, initially implemented in 200 of the country’s poorest districts and expanded to all...

Eleven women sarpanchs figure in the list of the 48 accused in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) fund scam in Gujarat’s Dahod taluka. Authorities, however, pointed out that the real culprits could be their husbands running the show by proxy on these reserved seats. Fatehsinh Pargi, a resident of Moti Shehra village in Fatehpura taluka, who brought the issue of non-payment of wages and manipulation of job...

Today, "social entrepreneurship" has become an important development to help some of the poorest groups in the world like the rickshaw pullers in India. Colorfully adorned cycle rickshaws have long been a part of India's landscapes. These hardworking yet environmentally friendly rickshaw operators can navigate busy urban streets and rural country roads with the same ease. But they are all but invisible to their passengers as they barely subsist above the...

The government owes crores of rupees to workers under its flagship rural jobs scheme as wages for April and May, even though payment is not supposed to be delayed by more than a fortnight. Wage payments of Rs283 crore are due for the first two months of the ongoing fiscal under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, according to data available with the rural development ministry, which oversees the...

To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme, India could introduce biometric-aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. The government’s initiative comes at a time when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been criticized for leakages. It is the government’s largest social sector spending programme with allocation for this fiscal pegged at Rs40,100 crore. The proposal, which has already been submitted to the government for...