-The Indian Express Wells dry up across 8 districts, storage down to less than 8%, residents trudge long distances, officials brace for worst drinking water crisis in 40 years. Beed/ Parbhani (Maharashtra): Seventy-year-old Parobai Shinde, carrying an aluminium pot that has seen better days, is briskly walking the 2-km stretch from her home in Manyarwadi village in Georai taluka in Beed district to Bharat Sonmali’s field. Sonmali is reploughing his 30...

Two recent reports show that this social sector scheme has had a causal impact in improving lives, especially for women and children Fourteen million people escaped falling into poverty under the world’s largest anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In 10 years of its existence, the scheme reduced poverty by 32 per cent. Recent data also shows that more women are drawing cash incomes, more children...

-IPS News GUNTUR, India: Thirty-seven-year-old Kode Sujatha stands in front of a hut with a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by a group of men shouting angrily and jostling one another for a spot at the front of the crowd. Each of the boatmen, who carry sand mined from a nearby river to the shore every day, wants to be paid before the others.   Sujatha stares hard at them, holds up a piece of paper...

-The Indian Express The objective is to ensure that a standard minimum wage rate exists for all kinds of occupations. The government is seeking to significantly boost incomes of the country’s lowest paid workers by substantially raising the minimum wages payable to them, mandating payments through formal banking channels and ensuring they get social security benefits like provident fund and medical insurance. Fresh amendments are being readied to incorporate these changes to...

-Livemint.com The money from the Union govt will be routed through the state employment guarantee fund window to the workers accounts New Delhi: In a bid to eliminate delays and corruption in the payment of wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Union cabinet on Wednesday approved the direct release of wages from the Centre to the workers. Workers will be assured of timely payment...