-The Hindu    Will not just help provide livelihood, but also protect land The Congress-led government in Rajasthan has taken up development of pasture land in tribal-dominated Udaipur region under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) by involving a voluntary organisation in the work. The project has been launched in Chhali and Amleta villages of Udaipur district. Inaugurating the project at the two remote villages this past weekend, State Rural Development...

-The Telegraph   The Centre will award gram panchayats that have excelled in implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to encourage rural bodies to perform better. The Centre has asked Jharkhand to pick a specific gram panchayat, which implemented the flagship rural job scheme well, at each of its 24 districts. After the December rural polls, 4,564 gram panchayats with as many mukhiyas are in place, so the selection...

The Centre is likely to raise remuneration under its rural job guarantee scheme and align it with the notified minimum wages of states following a court order last month.  Millions of workers enrolled under the government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are entitled . 100 a day for a minimum of 100 days of work in a year. Despite the wage now being linked to the consumer price...

The rural development ministry has drawn out a plan to spend as much as Rs 2 lakh crore on two of its major schemes — Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) and the Swarna Jayanti Gramin Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY). The ministry, however, has left it to the government and the plan panel to decide the timeline over which these funds should be spent. The plan panel has indicated that it wants...

Bid to add social content to UID scheme, otherwise in limbo   With the AADHAR scheme apparently in limbo, the Centre is making a desperate effort to provide it social content. As of now, only 3.5 crore unique identification cards have been issued as against an enrolment of 10 crore people across the country. Matters turned worse when the Reserve Bank of India issued a directive that bank accounts could not be opened on...