Putting an end to the last several years of squabbling between the NDA government in Bihar and the UPA government at the Centre, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has decided to stop awarding any new work to central government’s agencies under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) in the state. “In future no further work under PMGSY will be assigned to any central agency in Bihar, except the works already...

-The Telegraph   A Comptroller & Auditor General’s report, tabled in the Assembly today, has pulled up the state for poor implementation of a central government scheme for Rural Roads, pointing to substandard work, fraudulent payments to unscrupulous contractors and serious financial irregularities. Only nine per cent of rural habitations were connected with all weather roads under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) between 2005 and 2010, the five years that saw three...

-The Deccan Chronicle   Identification of work under the Rs 650 crore AP Rural Connectivity programme of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has come to a halt in the state. A local bodies association from Nalgonda approached the High Court with a plea that the identification of work under the scheme should be entrusted to local bodies and not the government department. The High Court put a stay on further...

The ever-energetic Jairam Ramesh has unveiled a new land acquisition policy for discussion. He has taken on the difficult task of changing an old law whose implementation has led to a sorry mess in Nandigram, Singur and Noida, to mention only a few of the recent cases that have hit the headlines. India’s policy regime for managing land rights and land transactions is totally dysfunctional. Greedy politicians in state governments have...

The government plans to focus its flagship rural jobs guarantee plan on the poorest districts of the country as there is a growing recognition within the administration that the scheme's nation-wide rollout has adversely impacted its performance. Launched in 2006, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme promises at least 100 days of unskilled manual work in a year to each household in rural India. The scheme was initially...