The Union Rural Development Ministry appears to have painted itself into a corner on the issue of paying minimum wages to workers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). The ministry has so far insisted that it is not obliged to pay minimum wages to MNREGS workers. This despite an Andhra Pradesh High Court order requiring the government to pay them statutory minimum wages. In a further...

IF Brazil has its Bolsa Familia, and Mexico its Progresa — schemes for alleviating poverty that have caught the fancy of international organisations — something that India has done recently is making news internationally. India’s system of social audits, that is, independent but local auditing of social programmes to fight poverty, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), is attracting world attention. A 42-member delegation from 33 countries...

Two months after Uttar Pradesh government launched a campaign to give incentives for the scheme of giving 100-day employment to 10 lakh marginalised families under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), it has become a bone of contention between the Centre and the state government. Under the initiative, the state had decided to appoint a nodal agency, identify civil society organisations and give them incentives for ensuring 80 to...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

It is the latest face off between Sonia Gandhi led National Advisory Council and Manmohan Singh led UPA government. The Council and the Rural Development Ministry have come to blows over what should be the minimum wage under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The NAC's resolution that endorses the urgent need for increasing wages is in direct conflict with the position taken by the Rural Developemnt Ministry. At the heart...