NREGA, the UPA’s flagship employment scheme for which the Government has spent over Rs. 90,000 crore, is facing complaints of fudging of attendance registers, prompting the Union Rural Development Ministry to constitute a Working Group to look into it. The Ministry has already set up six such panels to deal with different issues relating to implementation of the programme like planning and execution of works, transparency and accountability and timely payment...

The government will compile figures at the district and block levels to arrive at a more accurate identification of poor for better targeting of welfare schemes. So far, the poor in India have only been counted at the national and state levels. The Planning Commission has commissioned a study which will come up with these relevant numbers soon. The poverty cut-offs (a minimum monthly expenditure below which people are considered...

The Union Women and Child Development Ministry will map the high-risk and vulnerable districts to strengthen nutrition surveillance. It will also set up a working group for surveillance in health and nutrition at the Central level under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). This follows a paper prepared by the Women and Child Development and Health and Family Welfare Ministries for addressing nutritional challenges...

The new BPL census will have a big automatic inclusion and exclusion component, which is expected to make the list more credible, addressing the allegation that targeted benefits for the poor are cornered by the undeserving. A credible BPL census will be key to the implementation of the food security act being finalised by the government. While the new poverty lines suggested by the committee headed by S D Tendulkar...

The best advertisement is that which the public pays to receive. So the UPA government will turn the rural job scheme into a diploma course in its universities, teaching students about the pro-poor programme’s achievements against a small fee. The one-year course, which starts from the 2011-12 academic year, will also impart education in the nitty-gritty of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme’s implementation. Fittingly, at the end of it the...