-Newsclick.in The Narendra Modi government has carried the practice of making low budgetary allocations for MGNREGS to its limit. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS was introduced by the United Progressive Alliance-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left, which was supporting that government from outside. The scheme was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum...

-TheWire.in "Lack of funds results in suppression of demand for work and delayed payment of wages to workers. These are violations of the Act; they also constrain economic recovery." New Delhi: A group of 80 economists and other academics has written an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting him to immediately release adequate funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. As employment and wage levels struggle to...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Press release by Peoples' Action for Employment Guarantee dated 3rd November 2021 About 8 crore NREGA payments are pending as on November 3, 2021 according to Report 8.1.1 of the NREGA Management Information System (MIS). This means, for nearly 5 crore workers across the country this will be a Kali Diwali. Following the raging debate about NREGA funds running out with 5 months remaining, the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG)...

-The Telegraph These labourers have been working under the scheme between April and September this year but the Centre sent wages in September, and not within 15 days  Ashok Munduri from Chhotalagia village in Jharkhand borrowed Rs 5,000 in July to rent a tractor to plough his land. He had to sell a pig to repay the amount a month later, for he hadn’t received his rural job scheme wages. A study’s findings,...