State governments have been asked to roll out the model in which payments would be made through bio-metric authentication at the village level For speedy disbursal of payments to workers under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the ministry of rural development has decided to introduce the business correspondence model, to be followed by banks. State governments have been asked to roll out the model in which payments...
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Too sweeping a ruling
-The Business Standard The Supreme Court decision banning both mining and movement of ore in Bellary district in Karnataka, following the Lok Ayukta report, is excessive. The blanket ban penalises even those who did nothing wrong. While the outrage over the illegal profiteering of over Rs 12,000 crore by a politician-operator-bureaucrat combine is understandable, applying the brakes on all mining and related activity in the district is an undifferentiated response. The...
More »A new land law in sight, finally
-Live Mint Finally, a serious roadblock in the country’s march to industrialization may be removed soon. The Union ministry of rural development has unveiled a draft National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill. Once a law, LARR could potentially end arbitrary land acquisitions under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. Any well-functioning market gives clear signals and prices are market-driven. The 1894 law with its ill-defined “public purpose” clause...
More »India’s employment challenge by Himanshu
The recent estimates of employment and unemployment from the 66th round (2009-10) of the National Sample Survey (NSS) belie any hopes that the growth of the Indian economy between 2004-05 and 2009-10 has been inclusive. employment has expanded by only a million jobs during this period. Not only is this lowest ever growth recorded in any such period, the fact that it occurred during the period of highest growth in...
More »Bank correspondent model for NREGA closer to reality by Devika Banerji & Dheeraj Tiwari
The Centre is likely to ask states to devote 2% of the funds allocated to them under its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme for providing easy banking services to the rural poor. A funding crisis had hit the government's earlier effort to leverage the banking correspondent, or BC, model for the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) after banks refused to bear the cost of...
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