In a move most ministries would shy away from, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has written to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, requesting him for a performance and financial audit of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (NREGA), the most heavily funded flagship scheme of the UPA government. The minister has written to CAG Vinod Rai, who was recently criticised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for calling frequent...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

Revised MGNREGS guidelines to be finalised end of this week The revised guidelines for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is likely shift the social welfare programme's thrust from being labour-intensive to material intensive. This was indicated by the Union minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, on November 14 at a day-long seminar on the UPA government's flagship programme. At the consultations titled, Empowering Lives through MGREGA: Strengthening...

-The Telegraph   The CBI today began probing an Uttar Pradesh health scam running into thousands of crores that has led to the murders of two honest government doctors and the sacking of two ministers. The issue relates to the spending of Rs 10,000 crore allocated to the state under the National Rural Health Mission. CBI spokesperson Dharini Mishra said the agency had registered five preliminary inquiries on the orders of Allahabad High Court,...

Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...