To avoid graft in the implementation of the Nat-ional Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), e-muster olls will be launched for job seekers in the state from November 1. The implementation of NREGS has been facing a lot of criticism of graft ever since it was introduced a few years ago. In order to arrest such graft, the NREGS implementing agency, the district water management agency, is creating a database of...

In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...

The Jammu and Kashmir government is going to enhance allocation of funds under NREGA up to 500 crore against the availability of Rs 208 crore for the current fiscal year. This was stated by the minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar in Assembly while replying to supplementaries to a question of Subash Chander Gupta in Legislative Council today. He said the scheme primarily envisages providing employment but also works to create...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

Exposed, untreated excrement can kill by the million. One of the hardest-won UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a 2015 target of halving the proportion of those without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Even if achieved, the target would still leave some 500 million on the planet without this basic requirement for survival and dignity. As many as 79 per cent of rural and 46 per...