-IANS Civil society activists as well as economists Monday decried the "budget cuts" being made by the government for the rural employment guarantee act. The government seems to have decided to ignore its legal responsibility and is using budget cuts to rapidly dilute and undermine the rural employment act, the activists said at a press conference here. Economist Jayati Ghosh said that MGNREGA funding has not been keeping to its demand based requirements...

-Business Standard Limits funds to states under the scheme and still looking to reduce labour budget ratios The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had begun work on amending the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), restricting the coverage to a few backward districts, leaving out large portions of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Kerala from its ambit. The plan was eventually shelved after protests and a debate in...

-The Pioneer Bhubaneswar: With the increasing demand for building and construction materials in a rapid urbanisation and industrialisation process in the State, the use of minor minerals has been increasing. The housing and road communication projects, both in rural and urban areas and industrial hubs, have created huge demand for minor minerals that have raised concern for an effective minor mineral management policy. It is a fact that in many areas there...

-Outlook New Delhi: There is no central programme as popular as MNREGA; this was some state governments' message to the Centre as they conveyed their displeasure over the fund crunch for the scheme. On the occasion of 10th MNREGA Divas celebrations today, these states narrated how the rural job scheme did "exceptionally well" in the insurgency-hit areas of the country particularly in the northeast and Naxal-affected districts. The northeastern states conveyed their difficulties...

-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...