-The Hindu Business Line CM demands NREGA cover for farm labour Hyderabad: About 58 lakh farmers in Telangana will get a financial assistance of ?4,000 each for every acre of land they own under a programme launched by the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao today The State government has allocated ?12,000 crore for the scheme in the Budget for 2018-19. The farmers will get ?4,000 each an acre in the kharif and in...

  One of the salient features of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) is that there are provisions in it to ensure transparency and accountability. Section 17(2) of the MGNREGA says that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat (GP). In addition to that, Section 17(3) of the MGNREGA states that the GP shall make...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-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...