Bharat Nirman Yojana & MNREGA

Bharat Nirman Yojana

» The Union Government launched a new comprehensive scheme, named 'Bharat Nirman Yojana' on December 16, 2005.
» This scheme aims at developing rural infrastructure.
» The duration of implementing this scheme has been fixed for four years with an expected expenditure of Rs. 174000 crore.
» The major six sectors and their targets for next four years are :
  ★ Irrigation : To ensure irrigation for additional one crore hectare of land by 2009.
  ★ Roads : To link all villages of 1000 population with main roads and also to link all ST and hilly villages up to 500 population with roads.
  ★ Housing : Construction of 60 lakh additional houses for the poor.
  ★ Water supply : To ensure drinking water to all remaining 74000 villages.
  ★ Electrification : To supply electricity to all remaining 1,25,000 villages and to provide electricity connections to 2.3 crore houses.
  ★ Rural Communication: To provide telephone facility to all remaining 66,822 villages.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA)

» The National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill was passed by Parliament on September 7, 2005. It secured Presidential assent later in 2005 itself and became an Act.
» The Act provides for at least 100 days of employment to one able bodied person in every rural household every year.
» The wages admissible are around Rs. 120 per day.
» The Act (NREGA) came into force from Feb. 2, 2006. Initially 200 districts have been selected for the enforcement of the scheme.
» Works under the NREGA generated 90 crore (nearly one billion) person days of employment in 2006-07, at a cost of about Rs. 9,000 crore.
» The Government has extended the NREGA to all 604 districts of the country, with a total budget outlay of Rs. 16,000 crore for the extended scheme for 2008-09 (April 1, 2008).
Note : The Govt of India, October 2, 2009 renamed the NREGA as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).