Agriculture experts on Tuesday asked Finance Minister P Chidambaram to consider replacing the system of Minimum Support Price with Remunerative Prices and Participatory Price Insurance Scheme and to provide capital subsidy to build water storage pits
At least 22 Uttar Pradesh government officials have been suspended for their alleged bungling of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) funds.
Non-government activists Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze, who are widely regarded as architects of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP), boycotted its fourth anniversary celebrations at Vigyan Bhavan, on Tuesday, as a protest against the manner in which the programme had been implemented.
Programme has also failed in its target of providing a guaranteed employment of 100 days in a year to one person per family.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday charged that Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar has failed to fully implement Centre-sponsored schemes but is taking credit for them.
This step has been taken by the DM after all his efforts to spur the staff failed and the district continued to be placed among the least performing districts of the state in implementation of the scheme, the ADM added.
Four Members of Legislative Assembly, a Member of Parliament and over 100 village heads were on Friday detained ahead of their march to Rajasthan assembly demanding abolition of contractual system and social auditing in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, police said.
Union Minister of State for Communications and Technology Sachin Pilot on Friday charged the National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar with misuse of central funds worth over Rs 11 crore under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and other flagship programmes for the poor.
A sum of Rs 11.73 crore (Rs 117.3 million) was found to be misappropriated in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme in Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) has said.
The Centre has expressed displeasure over improper implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in some states, pointing to inadequacies like failure to put in place monitoring, auditing and accountability mechanisms.
Ballooning fiscal deficit can derail India's growth momentum
The quantum of irregularities can be gauged from the fact that during 11 months of last fiscal, Union Rural Development Ministry received 351 complaints of alleged embezzlement of funds in the NREGA.
A government-sponsored study on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has found large-scale corruption and irregularities in the implementation of the programme in several states with authorities in some areas misappropriating' central funds and threatening workers to keep their mouth shut."There was great fraud in the making (of job) cards, muster rolls were not maintained properly and work was not provided to job seekers sometimes," a team of researchers said.
Although India is a labour-surplus economy with an unlimited number of workers willing to work at a subsistence wage a paradoxical feature of the labour market is the rising incidence of scarcity or shortages amid a situation of potential plenty.
Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a worker is entitled to Rs 100 per day for minimum of 100 days in a year.
The project titled 'Thanal' launched by Edavaka Gram Panchayat with MGNREGS help, has provided less strenuous jobs for 600 senior citizens, including 250 tribals and 10 physically challenged in 15 nursery units, Panchayat President, Justine Baby has said.
'The Congress is trying to reinvent itself -- the caste census demand, OBC emphasis, the anti-corporate thrust, especially on Adani etc -- all this is not standard Congress strategy.'
The Tamil Nadu development formula makes programmes like the NREGS work through simple but top-down solutions.
Patil in her address to both Houses of Parliament said higher public spending on programmes of rural development has successfully raised incomes in those areas.
The Minimum Wages Act will be amended to enact a new centrally set minimum, in the wake of the National Advisory Council's suggestion on asymmetries in this regard between states on payments for work done on schemes under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has said states would not be allowed to ignore the findings of the social audits notified recently by his ministry on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
When the Majdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti -- formed by NREGA workers under the guidance of NAC member Aruna Roy -- approached the registration office, they were told that NREGA workers don't qualify as 'workmen' as defined in the Industrial Disputes Act and the Trade Union Act of 1962, because they are not engaged in a trade or industry.
The Centre, last year, had also decided to freeze the minimum wage paid under NREGA at Rs 100. Subsequently, the wages paid in many states under NREGA are lower than the minimum wages in the state.
Even as the flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme continues to face problems at the implementation level, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, ignoring suggestions by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and other economists, has refused to bring any major change in the scheme.
Launching an attack on the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist in West Bengal, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused the party of 'grabbing' crores of rupees from central funds meant for the uplift of the poor and downtrodden.
Former Union panchayat raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, lately in the news for denouncing the Commonwealth Games, is aiming his guns much closer to the United Progressive Alliance government's heart, at the way it is implementing the flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
"It may be a wild thought now. But the first Green Revolution came about as a result of very high water guzzling cropping systems from the irrigated regions of the country. But the NREGA holds the trigger for a second Green Revolution from the rain-fed areas, but using water conserving technologies and working with the smaller and poorer farmers while the first revolution came from the big farmers," Dr. Sharma said.
'Go around and ask what Amritpal has done for the village and nearby areas.'
The big budget and big boom National Food Security Bill, which will be to UPA II what the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right To Information Act were to UPA I, could not be cleared by the Union Cabinet on Tuesday and has been deferred to be taken up in its next meeting.
The Democratic Front, in its manifesto, also sought to tap rural voters by promising at least 200 days of job under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The government is considering a proposal to expand the types of works under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to provide wider option to beneficiaries.
Among the social sector schemes introduced in the Eleventh Plan were the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Though the government is also planning to introduce a scheme for food security, it may be the only addition during the current plan.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said the rural spending would not be affected by the drought situation caused by delayed monsoon, but was likely to improve due to the government's flagship NREGS. He said there would be some revival in the third and fourth quarters though the overall growth would be moderate, with the current year recording a growth rate of 6 per cent.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was launched by the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the first flush of its commitment to the 'Aam Aadmi' agenda.
An activist working for the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme was killed after being mercilessly beaten by a group of 12 Maoists at Jerua village in Latehar district of Jharkhand.
It can possibly happen only in Bihar. The names of rich including chartered accountant, government employees, shopkeeper of Public Distribution System and even dead have been allotted job cards and they have drawn money as wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the state.
Government managers are asking for a 60 per cent rise in allocation for the scheme in the next financial year. Rs 20,854 crore (Rs 208.54 billion) had been spent on the scheme until December 2010. Rs 64,000 crore (Rs 640 billion) has been sought for the coming financial year.
The government's bill for funding the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has risen steeply, due to its decision to revise wage rates under these projects and to link these to the inflation rate.
The forthcoming Budget is likely to make a provision of Rs 64,000 crore (Rs 640 billion) for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in 2011-12, against Rs 40,100 crore (Rs 401 billion) in the current fiscal.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances