Mgnrega tamil nadu

Representative image of MGNREGA workers. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Tiravur, Tamil Nadu: “I could kill someone,” said Janaki Chinarasu in early June at her home in Tiruvarur, protecting her forehead from the heat with her hands askew. “It’s like the sun god has conspired with the rain god to punish us.” Chinarasu is a frail, strong-witted woman with a five-year-old on her lap and a husband hovering around, looking for a washcloth to go out to work. She fantasised about her life as a farmer’s wife in the past before the unforgiving drought struck in the summer of 2016. “How we used to accidentally drop rice and then just clean it up. Now we have to eat it from the floor even if a few grains drop,” she said, feet gliding across the red oxide floor of her hut to turn off the gas stove. Tiruvarur, among other drought-hit districts in Tamil Nadu, is uniquely miserable for holding the position of the district closest to the Cauvery delta. Here, the people are especially bitter owing to the In August 2016, protests erupted in Tamil Nadu after Karnataka did not release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. In October, the Karnataka government, backed by a state assembly resolution, The failure of the monsoon was the next big blow to the farmers of Tamil Nadu. Hit by the drought, 254 farmers committed suicide, according to a petition filed in the Supreme Court by farmers associations. But the Tamil Nadu government, in its reply to the court in April 2017, said there were no farmer suic...

The Indo-German Project on Water Security and Climate Adaptation in Rural India (WASCA), a bi-lateral project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in partnership with the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) is implemented by GIZ (Represented by Govt of Germany). The is operational in five states namely Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. The project period is three years from April 2019 to March 2022.WASCA aims for the following three output areas: • Improved convergence of existing planning and financing approaches • Demonstration of convergent planning, financing and implementation and • ·Cooperation with the private sector. WASCA in Tamil Nadu has identified two most climate vulnerable districts, Ramanathapuram and Tiruvannamalai, through a scientific study based on 18 Climate Vulnerable Indicators developed by Centre for Climate Change and Disaster Management, Anna University, Chennai. The project is implemented in 1289 Gram Panchayats through Composite Water Resources Management Planning and Climate Resilience for water security and adaptation to climate change among rural populations in both the districts. The Department of Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Government of Tamil Nadu is the executing partner of WASCA in Tamil Nadu. It is jointly implemented through Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme under MoRD and National Water Missio...

After the implementation of MGNREGA, farmers are finding it difficult to get labourers to take up the difficult task of manually spraying pesticides. Pic: Wikipedia representational image of an agricultural drone The Delta districts namely Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Mayiladuthurai and Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu, are now in the thick of the Samba and Thaladi season and actively engaged in paddy cultivation. While Samba crops will be harvested in the first week of January 2022 nearing the Pongal festival, Thaladi crops will be reaped after Pongal. The region has already received abundant rain and the northeast monsoon rains too are expected from October 26. Farming activities are on in full swing in these districts which are famously known as the ‘rice bowls of the state’. Farmers are however currently tussling with a significant shortage of labourers to spray pesticides. The reason for the labour shortage is largely the fallout of the MGNREGA scheme, under which the villagers get a guaranteed wage employment for 100 days. Of late, this scheme has been attacked by many political parties such as Seeman’s Naam Tamilar Katchi. A substitute for labourers In this situation, drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have emerged as an useful substitute for labourers. A few progressive farmers across the state have already started deploying drones to spray pesticides and they it find it faster, cheaper and more effective. Arivazhagan, a farmer based in Thanjavur, owns 40 acres of land on which...

In September 2021, Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district set a record for creating The initiative’s aim was to ensure adequate water for agricultural and domestic purposes throughout the year while creating assets that Each of the ponds were built to hold about 3.6 lakh litres of water on farmer-owned lands in 541 village panchayats. This was an addition to a potential storage capacity of 40.69 crore litres. These ponds will help recharge local wells and other water bodies and contribute to water sustainability during non-monsoon periods. This initiative in Tiruvannamalai assumes enormous significance in light of the recently launched Their benefits could be in terms of an increase in crop area, crop diversity and crop yield. An enhanced provision of water will also cater to domestic needs and can support drought-proofing measures to manage climate risks in the long haul. The Union government increased the allocation for MGNREGS-related job boost by Approximately 130 million workers availed work under the scheme in the financial year 2019-20. It is also one of the focus areas in the Centre’s Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package In guaranteeing social protection for rural households below the poverty line through its mandate of providing 100 days’ annual employment at a minimum wage, the MGNREGS is simple in the idea that intends to harness the potential of unskilled rural people living in extreme conditions and offering them livelihood options. The bulk of work undertaken in M...

India’s constitution contains provisions for the ‘right to work’ and the ‘right to movement’ for all citizens. Established in 2005, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is broadly considered to operationalize this ‘right to work’. At the same time, a public discourse persists that views MGNREGA as a substitute for internal labour migration. Drawing on the results from 300 household surveys in three panchayats in the Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu, we test the validity of this discourse in this setting. We find that households that rely exclusively on MGNREGA have different demographic and socioeconomic characteristics compared to households that rely exclusively on remittances from internal labour migration. Furthermore, 20 per cent of households surveyed use both MGNREGA and internal labour migration as complementary livelihood strategies. We argue that there is a need for better understanding and recognition of the complementary potential of MGNREGA and internal labour migration. La constitution de l’Inde contient des dispositions pour le «droit au travail» et le «droit de circuler» pour tous les citoyens. Créée en 2005, la loi nationale Mahatma Gandhi de garantie de l’emploi en milieu rural (MGNREGA) est largement considérée comme rendant opérationnel ce «droit au travail» . Dans le même temps, un discours public persistant considère la loi MGNREGA comme un substitut à la migration interne de main-d’œuvre. Sur la base des résultats de...