-The Hindu A lack of sufficient funds, rampant payment delays and abysmal wage rates are to blame The ?11,000 crore fraud that diamond merchant Nirav Modi is said to have created is a figure that needs to be put in perspective. The total amount of wages pending under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme for the whole country (2016-17) was around ?11,000 crore too. This sum is a...
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Cracking the rural consumption puzzle -Aarati Krishnan
-The Hindu Business Line The surge in non-farm employment has led to a rural consumption splurge, making listed companies bullish Is rural India languishing in abject misery, or is it on a cheerful spending spree? Today you can get diametrically opposing views on this, depending on where you get your information. If you are an avid follower of news, then you would be firmly in the pessimist camp, having read all about...
More »Telangana doles out agri credit assistance; farmers get Rs. 4,000/acre
-The Hindu Business Line CM demands NREGA cover for farm labour Hyderabad: About 58 lakh farmers in Telangana will get a financial assistance of ?4,000 each for every acre of land they own under a programme launched by the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao today The State government has allocated ?12,000 crore for the scheme in the Budget for 2018-19. The farmers will get ?4,000 each an acre in the kharif and in...
More »Improving social audits -Suchi Pande & Rakesh R Dubbudu
-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...
More »Not dry, but not in full flow either -S Bhuvaneshwari
-The Hindu Parched throats can bring down governments; hence leaders rush to claim credit for ‘water ATMs’ set up in villages Tumakuru/ Bagepalli (Karnataka): Early in 2016, in the grip of drought for the fourth straight year, people of Pathapalli were in a rage. Surrounded by barren flatlands and rocky hills along the Andhra Pradesh boundary, the village had been facing an acute drinking water shortage. The people went on a protest...
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