Later this week, the Registrar General of India (RGI) will unveil the first flush of its findings from the 15th census. This once-in-a-decade effort is the seventh in independent India and is expected to showcase an entirely new set of vital statistics, consistent with the ongoing social and economic transformation of the country and something that should enthuse demographers and policy planners alike. Expectations are that the array of socio-economic data...

A pilot survey finding that 25-30% of the rural population can be automatically excluded from food security entitlements for below poverty line population might help forge a consensus between the government and the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council. The "automatic exclusion" criteria, devised on the basis of the N C Saxena report on methodology for a BPL census, is more liberal than the "bare bones" approach adopted by the government in...

Local communities without proper training might affect the outcome of the social audit planned for MGNREGS One criticism against the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is that the scale of the programme defies its effective monitoring. In a country as diverse and large as India, monitoring huge social sector schemes often leads to the creation of an additional layer of bureaucracy. That may be about to change for...

Assam’s performance on NREGA implementation remained a matter of concern for the year April 2009 – March 2010. NREGA is to guarantee 100 days of guaranteed employment of the rural communities of Assam but research showed a different picture. North East Social Trust (NEST), a voluntary organization working for the community development for last eight years in Assam, carried out a research last year in collaboration with the Indo-Global Social...

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...