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...

After being mired in controversies across the nation over multi-crore scams, the MGNREGA scheme hasn’t quite made headway in Bulandshahr district’s Anupshahr yet, say Bhamati Sivapalan and Yamini Deenadayalan “MGNREGA is a flop in Uttar Pradesh,” extended NGO worker Manish Sharma, as small talk, at the block development office of Anupshahr in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. Despite having been in force since 2005, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment...

The claim that the Unique Identification project will facilitate the delivery of basic health services is dishonest. AMONG the many reasons cited for India to proceed with the Unique Identification (UID) project – that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure, that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes, and so on – the most specious is perhaps the...

Warning that delays in wage payments were crippling the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-affected districts, Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh outlined his Ministry's latest attempts to jumpstart development in these areas. In the past, Mr. Ramesh has spoken of prioritising development in the country's 60 ‘Left Wing Extremism' [LWE] districts as a crucial prong in his government's battle against the guerilla army of...

Tamil Nadu has stopped using banks to pay workers employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), turning the clock back on the programme that was expected to eliminate layers of middlemen in reaching money to the poor. Rural development ministry officials at the Centre confirmed the development, but termed it “a temporary setback”. However, Tamil Nadu is not alone. Andhra Pradesh too has asked some of its poorest...