The district collector, Mr K. Devanand, on Friday asked rain-affected farmers to make good use of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) to harvest the remaining crop. The district collector said this while launching the programme in the fields of Allur village in Prakasam district. The biggest damage was suffered by the chickpea crop in the district and 5,392 acres were damaged in the sea-coast Kothapatnam mandal alone. Besides this, 2,400 acres of cultivated lands were damaged in Allur village. Mr Devanand said agriculture workers would be deputed for two days in chickpea fields and three days for tobacco harvesting.

THIS refers to the column "Far from failure' (February 15). The National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) is an inefficient way to revive rural economy. It would be better to improve infrastructure such as road and electricity in rural India and encourage the growth of industries. Only this would ensure employment and income to the poor. Brajendra Kumar Bardhaman, West Bengal

As the phase of implementation of the law approaches, there is palpable unease among the tribal populations. At Pipalkhura, forest Department personnel destroyed tribal homes and took away their belongings. THE road to Pipalkhura is long, rocky and dusty. Across a parched, hilly landscape occasionally broken by a village, farm or bazaar, we make our way to this remote village in Madhya Pradesh. Suddenly, we see a cluster of white tents breaking out of the brown earth

While the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government may boast of having successfully implemented the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme across the country, the real story in the national Capital is that graduates and post-graduates have taken to begging due to lack of employment opportunities. They may be indulging in an opprobrium-filled career, but there are the rich and middle-class among them that can put to shame many well-educated people in the country. This news about beggars in Delhi may make the salaried class feel small. A survey conducted by the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) of the Delhi University shows that six graduates and four post-graduates are beggars and they earn anything between Rs 200 and Rs 500 daily, depending on where they pick conduct their business. The best areas are religious sites, major red light intersections and markets. That adds up to Rs 15,000 per month, a salary level that is attained by a post-graduate after slogging for a few years in the normal course of events. According to the survey, eight beggars earn between Rs 200 and Rs 500 per day in the Capital. The DSW interviewed 5,003 beggars to take stock of the begging menace in the city following the direction of the Delhi High Court last year. As per the survey, out of the 506 beggar respondents who were literate, 321 (9-10 per cent) were educated up to the primary level followed by 175 (4.56 per cent) beggars who were educated up to the secondary level. The survey reports that beggars earn anywhere between Rs 50 to Rs 500 per day. There are approximately 58,570 beggars in the State, and the majority are from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with Haryana, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Delhi also making a fair contribution. Interestingly, most of the beggars who were interviewed were aware of the fact that beggary had been made illegal by the Government. Around 54.13 per cent beggars responded that they were aware that begging was illegal while the rest of the others said they did not know It also shows that either the beggars are unafraid of the law or that it is not being implemented properly. For many, asking for alms was a family profession,only a few said they were forced into it by someone else or were part of a gang. A large majority live on pavements (1,082), near temples (644) and under bridges (406). Although the department is still in the process of finding out about those who have a physical deformity, whether someone actually caused it or if it was genetic or due to a disease. That they were opting for begging as the best career option can also be gauged from the fact that their age category was between 13 and 19 years. Surely, they could have done some other work, but chose this particular mode of earning a living as it generated greater cash on a regular basis plus and did not entail much physical exercise.

Does away with middlemen; ten States keen to replicate model The implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) through biometric smart cards in Andhra Pradesh has attracted nationwide attention, with many States planning to adopt a similar method. Financial Information Network and Operations Ltd (FINO), a Mumbai-based technology solutions provider, is presently implementing NREGS in five districts of Andhra Pradesh by paying wages through biometric smart cards. "The hassle-free mode of payment sans middlemen has become a hit with the unskilled manual labourers. Encouraged by the feedback, at least 10 other States, including Orissa, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, are showing interest in adopting similar methods,' Mr Rishi Gupta, Chief Financial Officer and President (Sales), FINO, told Business Line over phone from Mumbai. Implementation After a successful pilot programme in eight mandals of Warangal and Karimnagar districts, the payment of pension and National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme wages are now being paid through smart cards in 259 villages

Economy on the move: The President, Ms Pratibha Patil, the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, and the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Mr P.R. Dasmunshi, arriving to attend the first day of the Budget Session at Parliament House in the Capital on Monday.

DOWN TO EARTH Sunita Narain / New Delhi February 26, 2008 It was the mid-1980s, environmentalist Anil Agarwal was on a mission: to track down the person who had conceptualised the employment guarantee scheme in Maharashtra. His hunt (I tagged along) led him to a dusty, file-paper filled office in the secretariat. There we met V S Page. I remember a diminutive, soft-spoken man, who explained to us why in 1972 when the state was hit with crippling drought and mass migration of people, it had worked on a scheme under which professionals working in cities would pay for employment in villages.

Works would be undertaken under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the National Parks. This information was given by Forest Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah at a meeting of officers of National Parks, Forest Department and National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme . This meeting of officers of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Forest Department was held for exploring the possibilities of starting works under this Scheme at forest villages. Those present on the occasion included Secretary Rural Development Ashok Shah, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Wildlife PB Gangopadhyay, Chief Conservator of Forests Suhas Kumar, Conservator of Forests Wildlife and Vinay Burman of Narmada Valley Development Authority. Forest Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah said that it is necessary to include residents of forest villages in the mainstream of development. For this purpose, works are getting done on a large scale. Ashram Shalas for children of forest villages' dwellers are being opened from July in the next session. He told the forest officers that whatever works are necessary for development must be done. For this, development schemes for villages falling under National Parks, Sanctuaries and forest ranges should be chalked out. Whatever works can be done under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme should be done and for the remaining works resources should be mobilised for the Forest Department. He told the officers to get the saplings of fruit-bearing trees planted at the Badas of beneficiaries belonging to scheduled tribes. He instructed the Forest Department officers to seek the guidance and cooperation of Technical Department officers in construction works. Secretary Rural Development Department Ashok Shah gave information to the officers about National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme . He said that many beneficiary-oriented works like Kapil Dhara, Nandan Phalodyan, Bhumi Shilp, Nirmal Vatika and silk sub-plan can be implemented under the Scheme . Similarly, works of community development including Shail-Parna, Nimal Neer and Vanya sub-plan can be launched. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests PB Gangopadhyay told the officers that vast possibilities of labour-based works exist in the area under National Parks and sanctuaries. With a view to tapping these possibilities works under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme-MP can be launched. On the basis of information under the Act, forest officers should prepare schemes and present the same to the concerning District Panchayat. The workshop was also addressed by officers of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme , Joint Commissioner AK Singh and chief engineer AK Choudhary.

In the wake of a CAG report pointing to "significant deficiencies' in the implementation of UPA Government's flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, the Union Rural Development Ministry has decided to keep all the In a recent letter to all MPs, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad has informed them about the new steps taken by his Ministry in this regard and requested their active engagement in the implementation of the scheme in their respective constituencies. According to sources, the Ministry, in collaboration with National Informatics Centre, has developed a software which can segregate data on the schemes for each districts. This data would then be e-mailed to MPs on a monthly basis from February onwards. In the beginning, the Ministry will send the monthly reports on its three main schemes