The Centre has said that raising the limit of 100-days employment provision under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is under consideration.

Addressing a meeting of district monitoring committee for developmental schemes and programmes at Raebarely, UPA Chairperson and Congress President Sonia Gandhi today said that in view of providing employment to all the needy persons under MGNREGA, several proposals and amendments were under consideration. She also responded to the suggestion of District Magistrate and ex-officio Secretary of the Committee about raising of employment days limit under the Act to ensure employment to all job card holders.

Gandhi also said that proper basic amenities should be provided to all Nagar Palika Parishad and Nagar Panchayats as well as in rural areas. She directed the officials for early repairing of faulty hand pumps and installation of new hand pumps as per requirement of people for providing drinking water in rural areas.

The District Magistrate informed her that he has demanded 1,500 new hand pumps in addition to the repairing of 2,600 hand pumps. Participating in the meeting, local MLAs also raised the issue of early construction of AIIMS like hospital in Raebarely.

Gandhi has left for New Delhi after the meeting.

The Centre and the Bihar Government today signed an agreement with the World Bank for 100 million US dollar additional credit to scale-up the ongoing Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, Jeevika.The Project is aimed at enhancing the social and economic empowerment of the rural poor in Bihar. According to release issued by Ministry of Finnace, the additional financing will help consolidate and expand the Project to cover all the blocks in the existing six districts covered under the Project.

This will not only allow the Project to cover all the villages in the existing districts, but also provide a comprehensive district wide model for poverty alleviation in Bihar. The Project has initiated a number of interventions on a pilot basis through convergence with other government programs and enabled access to public entitlements for the poor.

These include access to social security pensions for nearly 29,000 households in partnership with the social welfare department and access to wage employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in partnership with the rural development department for nearly 5000 Self Help Group women.

The Government has revised wage rates under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) last month. Giving this information in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister of Rural Development, Jairam Ramesh said the revised rates are effective from 1st of April.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has proved to be a major hit in Ernakulam district in Kerala. This is evident from the increasing number of people opting for jobs under the scheme. The MGNREGS has immensely contributed to local development and has helped in generating rural employment, besides women empowerment. 

AIR Correspondent reports: “The scheme has proved to be hugely successful in Ernakulam district, with people's participation showing a rising trend. During the last fiscal, 11,800 families completed 100 days employment under the scheme, registering a 240 per cent increase over the year before. Of the 8400 projects taken up during last year, 6546 were completed in various block panchayats. 33 gram panchayats in the district utilised over one crore rupees for various projects. Buoyed by the enthusiastic response, the district has set a target of generating 60 lakh 43 thousand man-days benefitting 1.17 lakh families during the current fiscal. A sum of 157 crore rupees has been set apart for this purpose. However, an important aspect that stood out was the abject lack of enthusiasm towards the scheme among the youth in the age group of 18-30 years. Only 15(.)61 per cent the total number of persons registered for the jobs availed of the benefit of the scheme in this age group."

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that revised guidelines for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, MGNREGA, will be prepared by the 15th of next month and the new face of the scheme MGNREGA-2 will be ready by the end of May 2012. Talking to media in Bhopal today, he said that his Ministry has accepted a report of Mihir Sen Committee in this regard. Mr. Ramesh said that thirty new works under MGNREGA have also been recommended. Out of these 27 are related with agriculture. He said that Rural Development Ministry has given approval to include these works in MNREGA. Mr. Jairam Ramesh said that CAG will do audit of MNREGA from this financial year. Action will be taken on the reports of CAG. In the first phase, audit will take place in 12 states including Madhya Pradesh. Union Rural Development Minister said that he has written letters to chief ministers of states to institutionalize social auditing of MNREGA. He said that irregularities to the tune of one hundred twenty crore rupees came to fore during social auditing in Andhra Pradesh. Social auditing is performed by village panchayats. He said that Andhra Pradesh stands first in implementation of MNREGA while Uttar Pradesh comes among the worst performers. Mr. Ramesh said that ninety nine thousand crore rupees have been allocated in the union budget for the rural development programmes this year. Out of this, Madhya Pradesh is likely to get about seven thousand five hundred crore rupees.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is being implemented very successfully in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. The district administration focused attention on the rural areas and started an immense IEC awareness campaign. The district got the National Award for Effective Initiative under MGNREGS for the year 2010-11. The scheme is being implemented in all the 228 village panchayats in the district. Around two lakh twenty-five thousand people belongs to one lakh fifty seven thousand households were provided job cards under this scheme. Six days of work is being providing to the workers in a week. The daily wage is fixed as Rs. 119. In the 2011-12 financial year 41 lakh mandays were generated and Rs. 46.78 crore were spent as wages under this scheme. In the present financial year 2012-13, a budget allocation of 65 crore rupees was earmarked for this scheme. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) scheme has come to the rescue of many tribal habitations in Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu by improving their connectivity with the laying of new earthen roads. The tribal habitations in Karamadai, Anamalai and Periyanackanplalayam in Thondamuthur block in the district are benefitted by the scheme with the new road connectivity by interlinking the various hamlets in this hilly area. The road construction was merely not possible in this hilly track under any scheme because of the huge capital outlay. But the MGNREGS scheme with the local participation converts the impossible task to a possible one. A classical example of improvement in road transport and connectivity can be seen in the Anamalai block area. Here things are undergone a transformation with people living in this area having laid these link roads under this scheme and thereby making these hamlets in this remote area accessible to vehicular transport. Almost all the tribal people in the area were engaged for work and their effort to clear huge rocks from the slippery foot paths for the construction of link roads is indeed worth mentioning. Before laying these roads tribal people in the area had to carry their agricultural products as head loads and walk kilometers to find the market. The connectivity had saved a lot of distance and time to the tribal people. Now they are getting better maternal and child health care and public distribution system is available in their door steps. Thus MGNREGS had improved the living condition of the tribal people in the hilly area and at the same time it gives work and wages to them.

Despite recent Planning Commission report mentioning that the people living below poverty line has increased in Meghalaya, the state government is trying hard not only to arrest this slide but also make these families meet both ends by implementing MGNREGS more rigorously. AIR Shillong Correspondent reports that the recent

Planning Commission Report has come as setback for the Meghalaya government, which is trying hard fight hunger and poverty in the state. He says, to root out corruption in implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the state government recently introduced to pay workers through biometric smart cards, which is a first in the entire north-eastern region. The scheme, involving Axis Bank, has been launched on a pilot basis recently under the aegis of the Reserve Bank of India. State government has also performed better than national average in implementation of MGNREGA in giving ‘person days’ to every eligible household. The state provided an average of 57.73 'person-days' per household to 3.5 lakh households, which was higher than the national average of 42.04 'person-days' per household, an annual report for the year 2010-11 states. The report saw at least four districts with more than 95 per cent of their labour projection.