Minister of State for Rural Development Pradeep Jain today informed the Rajya Sabha that the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies had observed that the potential of NREGA is not fully implemented because the scheme had led to inflation and undermines self-selection of poor.

The coastal district of Balasore too has not been spared of the migration curse. If lack of job opportunities was the reason for the exodus in KBK region, floods and resultant poor agricultural activities are the reasons in this flood-prone district.

There is an imbalance between the expansive vision expressed by the draft Act and the narrow means it seeks to achieve it.

Teena Thacker

Every year, tribal children from various districts of Rajasthan migrate to Gujarat to work in the Bt cotton fields. However, this year they have stayed back. Reason: they have illegally been working under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme using the job cards of their parents.

FEW employment generation programmes have created as much buzz as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The scheme is aimed at benefiting BPL households in rural India by enabling at least one member of such households to find guaranteed employment as unskilled labour for at least 100 days in a year.

The 2009 Budget is a politically powered effort to counter the effects of the global slowdown. Higher allocations across schemes for rural India are expected to trigger demand at the bottom of the pyramid and drag the economy out of the trough. The idea, though, is a big gamble. Already fiscal deficit is 6.8 per cent and borrowings at a record high.

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