-TheWire.in Most technocratic interventions introduced in MGNREGA appear to be designed to aid administrators rather than for actually helping workers. In his 2017-18 Budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley asserted with great conviction that the ruling dispensation’s “initiative to geo-tag all MGNREGA assets” to put them “in public domain has established greater transparency”. In 2016-17, the rural development ministry started an initiative called ‘GeoMGNREGA’, under which it was proposed that all assets created under...
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MGNREGA clean-up leaves many jobless in Jharkhand -Sanjoy Dey
-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Jharkhand’s bureaucrats have denied thousands of farm workers their legally mandated livelihoods under the guise of plugging leakages in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), say activists. Earlier this month, HT reported that the ministry of rural development had cancelled 93 lakh MGNREGA job cards — of which 2.67 lakh cards were from Jharkhand — to weed out duplicates and cards corresponding to dead beneficiaries. At the...
More »Inadequate Pensions Leave India's Elderly No Choice But To Work -Kinjal Sampat & Nandini Dey
-IndiaSpend.com Kamla Devi (not her real name), of advanced but uncertain age, lives in Lohari, a remote adivasi village located inside a wildlife sanctuary in Udaipur, Rajasthan. On a summer day in 2016, we approached her as she was chasing after a small herd of goats, to ask questions as part of a study on the relation between ageing, paid work and pensions. Our very first question–whether she was a beneficiary of...
More »NREGA dilution finger at Centre
-The Telegraph New Delhi: Activists and researchers today accused the Centre of systematically curtailing the 100-day rural job scheme by not releasing funds for the payment of beneficiaries, diluting norms to avoid giving compensation and cancelling cards of genuine job-seekers. They said payments to around 10 crore poor workers were getting delayed because of the lack of funds. The Union rural development ministry denied the charges. At a news conference, Nikhil Dey of the...
More »Non-payment of due MGNREGA wages recurred in 2016-17
The focus on MGNREGA got renewed when the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley during the presentation of Union Budget 2017-18 increased allocation under the programme to Rs. 48,000 crore (B.E.), up from Rs. 47,499 crore (R.E.) in 2016-17. However, it has been noticed by the Inclusive Media for Change team that nearly Rs. 9,748.7 crore of due payment during the last financial year is still pending, as on 2 April,...
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