-The Telegraph Patna: Districts in Bihar would soon have dedicated officials who would be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the schemes run under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The officials would be known as district programme officer (DPO). "The appointments are going to be made for smooth running of schemes under MGNREGA and all the works related to these schemes would be supervised and coordinated by these officials," a...

-Business Standard/ India Spend Delays in wage payment have been a constant throughout MGNREGS implementation Bachcha Lal’s shirt hung loosely over his frail body, exposing his sunken collarbones, as he stood outside his straw-thatched home in central Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Bundelkhand region. “They all rely on me,” he said, pointing towards his tubercular son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter. Illiterate and a landless labourer, 65-year-old Lal makes about Rs 175 a day when he...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government's spending on the rural job scheme increased 10 per cent in the last fiscal despite a matching decline in the number of beneficiaries because of deletion, challenging claims that weeding out bogus card-holders helped cut down on expenditure and pointing to the lack of jobs in rural areas. After verification, the government struck off the names of 1.62 crore job card-holders under the Mahatma Gandhi National...

-The Indian Express The NDA government’s approach towards MGNREGA — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act — has differed from that of the previous UPA regime in one significant way: There is greater emphasis now in the building of “individual household” assets, as opposed to “community” assets, under the scheme that provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment annually to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do...

-Hindkisan.com Alarmingly, despite wages paid under MGNREGA being much lower than the standard minimum wage in most states, increasing number of people from rural households are applying for jobs under the employment scheme. This trend is an indicator of the mounting distress in the rural economy which is aggravated by paucity of jobs. Mocking the economic condition of the distressed rural working community, the Union Government has decided to uphold the low...