Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the government has written letters to heads of IITs and IIMs and vice chancellors of universities seeking their cooperation and involvement in the scheme. He said the government has asked officials of these reputed institutes to visit villages for conducting technical and impact assessment studies besides lending their help in implementing the programme.
Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India had recently stated that real estate projects were experiencing time and cost overruns due to shortage of labour because of schemes like Nrega.
A bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar directed the CBI to conduct the probe on the basis of the survey reports provided by the petitioner, CAG report and the National Institute of Rural Development.
The government may raise the number of job days under the NREGA scheme to compensate rural households for loss of income due to a poor monsoon in large part of the country.
'It has been an ongoing process, talking to the relevant ministries about eliminating leakages and curbing non-core expenditure in various schemes.'
'The private sector believes that some enablers in labour-intensive sectors like apparel, toys, tourism, and media retail, can unlock a lot of jobs.'
Bihar Rural Development Minister Nitish Mishra on Monday ordered an inquiry into the allegations that nearly 73 per cent of the funds allotted for implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in 38 districts of Bihar, between 2006 and 2012, have been embezzled by authorities.
Non-flagship programmes to get a mere 5% hike in allocation
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee strongly retorted as 'distasteful' the taunt by Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh while releasing the fourth installment of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act funds to her state that 'this reflects how sensitive the so-called 'brain-dead government in Delhi' is to the needs of the people of West Bengal'.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Sunday urged his successor D V Sadananda Gowda to immediately release Rs 200 crore for providing employment to people in drought-hit areas under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
Accusing Jairam of making a mountain out of a molehill, she has sought to draw the prime minister's attention to the minister's bid to generalise some information.
'We cannot leave our entire unorganised sector to the vagaries of market forces.'
'Given our turbulent neighbourhood, the prime minister is likely to emphasise on democratic dividend as the reason behind India's continuous prosperity.'
China has sought information on India's poverty reduction programmes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, to beef up its own strategy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana by bucking anti-incumbency, managed to make significant inroads into the Dalit seats and Jat strongholds.
Atishi will have a brief tenure in office as assembly elections in the national capital are due in February.
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.
Senior equity research analyst Ramesh Bhojwani's biggest disappointments include no word on foreign direct investment, an absolute silence on reforms which is the need of the hour in several sectors like banking, realty, infrastructure and power. "Even the issue of divestment in PSUs has been given a passing reference," he adds.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and demanded smooth transfer of funds for Central schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act and asked for help in holding the forthcoming Kumbh festival, cleaning of the Ganga and coal supply to the state.
Of these 8.5 million additional people employed in September, 6.5 million were in rural India, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
At least 22 Uttar Pradesh government officials have been suspended for their alleged bungling of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) funds.
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.
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
However, demand was still much higher compared to the previous years, underlining the scheme's vital role in providing employment to the rural poor, a vast majority of whom are migrants.
The Congress on Saturday rubbished media reports that it is going to use the Food Security ordinance as a trump card in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, saying the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has come up with various schemes in the social sector and for the nation's welfare during its nine-year rule.
It is true that, at 119 crore person-days, the employment created this year by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), the government's flagship programme, is tiny, a fraction of one percentage point of the total employment in the country.
Government will roll out National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in all the 596 rural districts in the country in 2008-09.
'We are confident that over the next few years the government will strike a fine balance between populist measures and growth, and manage coalition partners well.'
The districts have provided 64 days of jobs under the 100-day job scheme as against the state average of 45 days.
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).
"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.
The chief minister pointed out that out of that figure, Rs 1,815 crore (Rs 18.15 billion) was a liability and not received from the Government of India.
She claimed that the Centre has not released funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) project for the state and other initiatives of its housing and road departments.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav attacked the Congress over the food security ordinance, accusing it of indulging in vote bank politics and said its intentions were not good.
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 Tamil Nadu development formula makes programmes like the NREGS work through simple but top-down solutions.
The scheme would check fake payments made under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and ensure that the officials don't fudge the workers' wages, state rural development department sources said. Launched from Dharhar village of Paliganj area in Naxalite-hit Jehanabad district recently, the 'E-Shakti' scheme promises to cover each worker with smart cards carrying details about duration of work, the wage earned, photograph and registration number of the beneficiary.
The RBI governor believes corruption ca be fought by streamlining the system.
