Eighty labourers, both men and women, are at work at Thiruvanduthurai village in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu, about 325 km south of Chennai. They are digging a pond - about an acre wide and six feet deep - funded under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MGNREGS. Outside the work perimeter, two middle aged men look on, worried. P. Murugan and K. Govindaraj are farmers from the...

The union finance ministry’s decision to partially subside capital investment in healthcare and education by extending the “viability gap funding” facility to these sectors is welcome as they are vital areas of social infrastructure, which are no less important than roads and bridges. But every sector has its own complexity and the nuancing that the health ministry has sought for such subsidy to healthcare infrastructure needs serious attention. The ministry’s...

Often criticised for lapses in the past, Uttar Pradesh is now credited for it's initiative to implement the Centrally-sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme successfully in the state. "I could see the increasing participation of people in it (MGNREGS) and the openness to reforms on the part of the government," said a Planning Commission member, Mihir Shah after attending a state-level discussion held here on Wednesday titled 'MGNREGS in...

Often criticised for lapses in the past, Uttar Pradesh is now credited for it's initiative to implement the Centrally-sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme successfully in the state. "I could see the increasing participation of people in it (MGNREGS) and the openness to reforms on the part of the government," said a Planning Commission member, Mihir Shah after attending a state-level discussion held here on Wednesday titled 'MGNREGS in...

Budget 2011-12 belies hopes of effectively addressing the housing needs of the poor. It fails to provide the much-needed impetus to improve the supply of affordable housing for economically weaker sections (EWS) and low-income groups (LIG), particularly those who live in the urban areas. About 99 per cent of housing shortage pertains to these two socio-economic categories. In absolute terms, by the end of 2012, the deficit will be as...