The Centre has allocated Rs 73,000 crore for the rural jobs guarantee programme for 2022-23.
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.
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.
However, 63 per cent Indians were "satisfied" with their standard of living
The first meeting of the newly-reconstituted Central Employment Guarantee Council last week, meant to oversee the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, saw two prominent members, Jean Dreze and Aruna Roy, object to various new ideas of the government, beginning with the one of using it to build Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendras, meant to serve as offices for panchayats.
"If implemented 'honestly and sincerely', the programme would increase the rural income and 'certainly we will be able to soften very considerably the harsh edges of extreme poverty," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for an urgent need to revamp the entire agriculture extension system in the country through community and private sector participation.
This meant targets set for primary school admissions, assured income for every family and roads, water, housing and electricity. And yearly spending of over Rs 1,20,000 crore (Rs 1,200 billion), up from Rs 36,000 crore (Rs 360 billion) in the last year of the National Democratic Alliance government.
Ramesh, a labourer in Toomda village near Bhopal, can't believe his luck. He earns Rs 81 a day, digging wells under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, the United Progressive Alliance's flagship social welfare scheme that started in 2006.
A wall in Vijaypura is an example of what a single positive example can do for a large programme like the National Rrural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The minister said for eligible persons belonging to the violence-hit families seeking self-employment, the government would facilitate loans through banks.
Orissa, where the programme was already under a cloud after an NGO alleged false data were being entered on the state's NREGA website, is now uncovering more scams. A team of researchers led by economist Jean Dreze and Ritika Khera, which is doing a survey focussed mainly on the corruption in the programme in Orissa, recently dug out a doctored muster roll in Badhigam gram panchayat of Boudh district.
A quarterly index on jobs created is vital for policy action.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday launched the 'historic' National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme aimed at providing right to legal livelihood to the rural poor.
Govt's grand plans often go wrong. Although they seem good in theory, they don't work in practice. For instance, last Pay Commission, which handed out generous pay hikes to central government employees on the unrealistic recommendation (which quickly became an assumption) that the number of such employees would be reduced by 3 per cent each year, totalling up to a cumulative reduction of 30% in a decade. Success comes with a special set of circumstances, not as routine.
As work on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme gathers pace in the villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, paddy farmers of Punjab are faced with an unprecedented shortage of farm hands to sow the crop.
A year after the launch of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, two sets of figures that it throws up are arresting.
The finance minister has stayed true to her commitment to fiscal consolidation, even though the pace of the decline in the deficit could have been faster, notes A K Bhattacharya.
The number of centrally sponsored schemes have increased to 35 in FY22 from 30 in FY21 and central sector schemes have increased to 704 from 685 in the previous year, reports Dilasha Seth.
'It is just an excuse to say that the Centre has run out of money.' 'Pruning these schemes would mean hard time for the people of India.'
India's likely medium-term potential growth will almost certainly be markedly lower than that experienced in pre-pandemic years, warns Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor to the Government of India.
The notion that the BJP gained its increased tally by wiping out the Left parties and the Congress is completely misleading. Equally misleading is the belief that the TMC held its ground in all its existing seats. A little more than a fifth of the seats Mamata Banerjee's party had won in 2016 was lost to the BJP this time.
The Budget has stuck to annual increases in agri credit targets.
The total rainfall till now is not only deficient, but is also erratic in terms of both geographical spread and timings.
'Although the Congress party ethos resembles a court with courtiers, Sonia Gandhi's style was to be consensual.'
Forget about interim Budgets, one cannot easily recall even a full Budget of any government in recent times having rolled out benefits of this order to such a large number of people, says A K Bhattacharya.
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