-The Asian Age   With several controversies emerging that the funds released for the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) being utilised for other purposes by many state governments, the Haryana government has on Sunday made MGNREGS Fund Act to check the proper and dedicated utilisation of the funds. As per the new notification to this effect, issued by the rural development department, Haryana, funds received from the Union government and...

-The Economic Times   High agricultural wages due to the success of government's flagship employment guarantee programme has hindered the development of micro enterprises in the hinterlands, says a research paper by Indian School of Business (ISB). The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has facilitated poverty alleviation in rural areas, it has discouraged village-level entrepreneurial ventures, the study has concluded. MGNREGA entitles 100 days of employment in a year to...

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday cleared the decks for a huge fund outlay which is set to bolster Bihar's rural infrastructure. Speaking to journalists here, Mr. Ramesh said the Union Rural Ministry would pump in Rs. 2,500 crore for laying of over 6,500 km of rural roads across the State for fiscal 2011-12. “Bihar is a top priority for us with Rs. 8,000 crore being allotted from the Central...

You know your negotiating strategy is in trouble when countries ranging as far as Norway in the developed world to partners like South Africa and neighbours like Bangladesh start quoting Gandhi and Nehru back to you. Two months ago, this was the unfortunate situation Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan had to face at the Durban conference on climate change. That she managed, through a passionate last-minute speech, to ensure that all was...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...