Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi wants an urban job scheme on the lines of the MGNREGS, started in 2006 through legislation and the budgetary allocation for which each year is around Rs 40,000 crore. The proposal, sent by his urban development department, is with the ministry of urban development and poverty alleviation. "We are urbanising very fast and migration to cities is creating a huge employment gap. An NREGA-like programme would...

With Mahatma Gandhi NREGA providing rich political dividends and letting  the government stay in course, the UPA-2 is stepping on the gas to multiply the mileage. On June 3, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will launch the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, a massive self-empowerment programme for rural India with focus on women, from a tribal district in Rajasthan, Banswara. But unlike the NREGS providing sustenance to rural India, the NRLM is to make...

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it. For crucial items like food, direct provision protects poor consumers from rising prices and is part of a broader strategy to ensure domestic supply. Problems like targeting errors...

Construction related projects in the state are facing a huge problem of labour shortage. Labourers are not available even at higher wages and as a result, ongoing projects, including many realty projects, are progressing at a snail's pace. The labour intensive real estate and infrastructure industry is worth nearly Rs 50,000 crore and depends heavily upon migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar besides Panchmahal and Dahod districts of Gujarat. "Infrastructure...

-Express News Service   Even as irregularities in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have been making headlines, a discrepancy in the scheme was reported from Dumuriput village under Padampur panchayat in Koraput block. Vehicles have been put to use and only a minimum number of job card-holders engaged in the construction work of approach road to the village from the old national highway. The work started a few...