-The Financial Express The rural development ministry has identified unrealistic planning at gram panchayat level, lack of quality assets created, inadequate capacity of functionaries, inadequate technical staff, lack of monitoring and delay in wage payment, as factors adversely impacting the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The report on performance, initiatives and strategies (FY15-16 and FY16-17) for MGNREGA released by the rural development ministry also identified issues...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Often under attack over alleged Poor execution of MGNREGA scheme, Government today claimed the average person days employment generated per household last fiscal was highest in eight years at 49 days even as there was improvement in timely payment of wages under the livelihood programme during the span. In its report titled, 'Performance, Initiatives and Strategies FY 2015-16 and FY 2016-17', the government claimed that a total of 235...

-The Hindu Confining it to just the Ministry of Rural Development would be the most retrograde step in democratic decentralisation in over a quarter century. If, as The Hindu’s exclusive on Wednesday indicates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to close down the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, it would confirm one’s worst fears about his government’s hypocritical approach to grass-roots democracy for grass-roots development. This was a lacuna that was evident in the ‘Gujarat...

-Ideas for India The National Food Security Act was passed in 2013. This column reports findings from a recent survey on the status of the Act in six of India’s Poorest states. Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal are doing quite well - the PDS is in good shape and most people are covered; however, Bihar and Jharkhand are yet to complete essential PDS reforms. A survey of the National Food...

-Scroll.in The government is calling it 'semi-scarcity'. In barren Saurashtra, farmers say that water promised to them from the Narmada project has not been reliable. For almost three years, bathing has been a luxury for Manjuben Jhala. The 50-year-old dairy farmer from Sowarada village has spent all her summer days herding cattle across the barren landscape of Gujarat’s Jamnagar district, in search of fodder and a few scoops of water for her frail...