Madhubhai Koli of Khambha village in Amreli district worked for 10 days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2009. He was paid Rs 1,000 that were deposited in his account. What is shocking is that Koli died way back in 2006. The much-publicized employment programme of the UPA government reeks of severe corruption in this village of Saurashtra. And, a Right to Information (RTI) application by...

-The Times of India   In what is a first in Andhra Pradesh, 101 workers in Medak district have been awarded unemployment allowance to the tune of Rs 2 lakh for having been denied work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The award is being seen as an assertion of wage earners' rights under the Act as this is the first time that they have earned compensation for not...

The UPA government has widened the scope of its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to include works related to agriculture, animal husbandry, poultry, drinking water and sanitation.  In its initial avatar launched over six years ago, the NREGA was limited only to works concerning water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development. It was largely seen as a subsistence dole for the rural people in the lean...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to run into a debate on public health policy after the Planning Commission moved to nix a proposal to include healthcare in the list of public entitlements such as education and food. Central to the proposal—initiated by a high-level expert group (HLEG) headed by K. Srinath Reddy, a leading advocate of preventive cardiology and president of the Public Health Foundation of India—was the...

-The Business Standard   A Nandan Nilekani-led task force on an Aadhaar-enabled unified payment infrastructure has recommended setting up a network of one million interoperable micro-ATMs across the country. The ATMs will be operated by business correspondents. The task force, headed by the Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India, submitted its report to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday. The panel has suggested that in order to set-up this network quickly, a last-mile transaction...