-The Hindu Strengthening the MGNREGA would be more prudent than a targeted cash transfer plan like PM-KISAN Rural distress has hit unprecedented levels. According to news reports, unemployment is the highest in 45 years. To allay some misgivings of the distress, one of the announcements in the Budget speech was that “vulnerable landholding farmer families, having cultivable land up to 2 hectares, will be provided direct income support at the rate of...

-Economic and Political Weekly In the wake of the central government’s minimum support prices hike for kharif 2018–19, the state government in Madhya Pradesh implemented a variant of the deficiency payments system called the Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana for compensating the farmers when market prices fell below MSP. Besides the problems of long delays in payments to farmers, large transaction costs that farmers incurred due to multiple registrations, and the disposal of...

-Newsclick.in Funding is not keeping pace with demand, and delays or vanished dues are discouraging job seekers in these times of extreme rural distress. Here is a little known but chilling fact about the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGS: between April and mid-December this year, about 1.28 crore people who demanded jobs were turned back. This refusal to give work has been happening every year but it has increased after the Modi...

-Down to Earth The scheme's Management Information System destroys local accountability, promotes centralisation and administrative control and gives out wrong data There is an increasing tendency in the Union government to show performances of central schemes, especially social welfare programmes, through data captured by the Management Information System (MIS). It is indeed a matter of astonishment how the MIS data always shows high performances of schemes and programmes, while ground surveys and...

-The Hindu Seizures from premises of Christy Friedgram Industry included documents related to suspicious payments and classified documents like proposals for posting of IAS officers. Chennai: The Income Tax Department has unearthed documents that expose an alleged nexus between a major supplier of food items for Tamil Nadu’s flagship noon meal scheme and politicians, bureaucrats and their associates. Analysis of electronic storage devices and documents seized from the premises of Tiruchengode-based Christy Friedgram...