Notwithstanding the marginal decline in spendings under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) over the past two years, Himachal has the best performance indicators, pu

MGNREGA can only succeed if politics is taken seriously in the design of accountability mechanisms.

New Delhi Notwithstanding apprehensions expressed by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on the proposal of giving grain as part payment of wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, food minister KV Thomas on Sunday continued to support the idea. Thomas said, “There is enough surplus grain to be given to poor families.”

In a recent letter to the Jairam Ramesh, Thomas had made the proposal, which he said would also help ease the problems of excess foodgrain stocks for the government.

GUWAHATI: The North East Social Trust (NEST) has said that the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has not yielded much result in Assam.

The NEST along with various other organizations of the State is monitoring the efficacy of the MGNREGA implementation in Assam for the last couple of years. For the 2011-12 financial year, the NEST carried out an intensive research on the basis of the government data to find out the implications of the Act in the State.

Admitting that MNREGA has its share of corruption and irregularities, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Sunday guidelines for the revamped version of the Centre’s flagship rural deve

JAMMU : Equating dependable road communication with economic prosperity, Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah on Thursday emphasized the need for dovetailing various road development schemes to obtain holistic results and expand benefit orbit.

Taking stock of the progress and status of flagship programme PMGSY here, the Chief Minister said that linking rural and remote areas with highways is all the more important in a State like Jammu and Kashmir with a hilly and difficult terrain.

Increasing use of pesticides and herbicides in agriculture is playing havoc with the farming community apart from resulting in increased levels of water contamination.

A recent epidemiological study has shown the presence of arsenic, cadmium, chromium and mercury apart from much higher levels of pesticides in the water across Punjab, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

It is back to the 1970s as far as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is concerned. The job guarantee scheme is set to provide food grain as part of wages. The rural development ministry, which found its NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) allocations squeezed in the Budget, has approached the food ministry with a proposal to provide food for work under the scheme.

The scheme, which guarantees 100 days of work on demand to any rural citizen, had a budget of about Rs 40,000 crore till last year. It found its allocation almost halved in this year’s Budget.

The Centre is keen to resolve differences with rights activists over the remuneration under its flagship rural job guarantee scheme, which can potentially save it from paying .

The projects include a $400 million watershed management programme and a $1 billion rural water supply and sanitation project