-The Indian Express Congress manifesto should have promised better implementation of MGNREGA instead of another scheme In its previous ruling stint in New Delhi, the Congress’s flagship social welfare programme was MGNREGA, which provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. For its next shot at power, the grand old party is promising to implement a...

-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 There is enough evidence to show that the government has failed farmers and agricultural labourers in a big way As the Lok Sabha debates the vote of no confidence today, representatives of farmers from across the country will be marching outside Parliament under the banner of All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), an umbrella body of 201 farmer organisations. Farmers have already passed a vote of no confidence against...

-The Indian Express NREGA is a demand-driven programme and if the demand vanishes because wages are low and uncertain, nothing will be able to save it. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is going through a deep crisis of delayed and failed wage payments. The problem is not new, but it is more serious than ever and threatens to undermine the entire programme. The crisis has at least four manifestations: Delayed payments,...