Friday 03 September 2010 Government 2.0: The Road Ahead
Nationwide NREGA from April 1

The operational area of the NREGA will be extended from the current 330 districts to all the 604 districts from next month.

New Delhi: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) will become operational in all the 604 districts of the country from April 1 next month.<!--more-->

The NREGA which provides the poor people in India a legally enforceable right to get minimum employment for 100 days is currently being implemented  in 330 districts of the country.

The decision to make it operational nationwide was taken  at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended, among others, by Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram, on Friday.

In order to publicise the NREGA on a wider scale, the Union Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has written to the Chief Ministers of all states and Administrators of Union Territories to cooperate actively for the advocacy and promotional activities of programmes.

The Minister said this would help in disseminating information on the NREGA at Gram Sabhas at village level and conventions at block and district levels.

He has also requested them to ensure that zero-balance accounts of NREGA workers are opened in post offices and banks so that the wage payment due to them is made through their accounts as this will ensure transparency in the NREGA.

The Act has also been hailed by experts as an important tool to provide relief to those in distress and is reported to have made a significant difference to the lives of the rural poor who have used it to secure relief wherever they had no other source of livelihood.
—iGovernment Bureau

The NREGA, for me, is an important tool in ensuring people's Right to Work & thereby Right to Food. It's a landmark Act and denotes the government's concern for the rural populace who don't have options like in cities. If implemented strictly and fairly, it would also ensure less migration to towns & cities and thereby not add to some urban governance problems we are witnessing already in places like Mumbai where a section of 'local' politicians are demanding sort of filteration of labourers coming from certain places. It's high time it is implemented in places like Bihar where the rate of migration for sheer lack of work is astounding. Great thinking by bthe government in long term perspective. Welcome move indeed.

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