The national rural employment guarantee scheme completes two years and moves to cover all the districts in the country. Has it been worth it?

The minister for health and family welfare, Mr Sambhani Chandrasekhar, on Monday said the state stood first in the country in executing National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Addressing a meeting, Mr Chandrasekhar said that Khammam district achi-eved first place in the state in implementing the scheme in a successful way and about Rs 163 crore was spent for the purpose. He said that 1.5 lakh labourers have been getting wages under NREGS for the last 45 days.

The Rs 50,000-cr scheme will be for skilled rural workers. Even as the UPA government's flagship programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), is yet to deliver the desired results, the rural development ministry is giving shape to another ambitious scheme to generate jobs. The target this time is to provide employment to 50 million below poverty line (BPL) families over the next seven years.

Five major steps taken by the State government for implementing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) in the backward districts in the State has come in for praise at a national workshop in Mussourie.

With no quick fix available to stem the spiralling prices of everyday food items, the worsening situation in which the common citizen finds himself is being cited as the main reason behind the rising cases of suicide in the country.

With the CAG finding irregularities in implementation of its flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the government has decided to stop direct cash payment to the beneficiaries and open bank accounts to transfer their wages.

The land-losers who had sacrificed their cultivation quarters to help installation of DVC's Mejia Thermal Power Station in Bankura blocked the coal consignments and entrance of the power utility causing severe inconvenience to its expansion work for 12 hours today. They demanded absorption against land acquisition. The stir was withdrawn only after the Bankura district administration assured one to one conciliation meeting on 27 May.

NREGA is the culmination of a long struggle by mass organizations on the issue of providing a minimum right to work. NREGA is clear on the fact that this right is available to all rural communities. To operationalize this Act, the state of poverty in different parts of the country was studied and to start with the worst affected districts were taken up.

This is the first Human Development Report of Andhra Pradesh.
The state has several unique features-development of participatory institutions, innovative poverty alleviation
programs, spectacular demographic transition, pursuit of

Bamboo is an important resource in the Indian socio-economic, cultural, ecological and climatic functional context with 1500 recorded uses. In this article, the authors have made an attempt to demonstrate how improved and scientific management techniques can increase the productivity of the existing bamboo plantation.

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