Kangra first ever district to geo-tag all assets under MGNREGA

•  Kangra has become the first district in the country to geo-tag 100 per cent of the assets generated under the MGNREGA.
• Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh felicitated all the rural development officers for the achievement.

About GeoMGNREGA

• GeoMGNREGA is a unique endeavor of the Ministry of Rural Development in association with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), ISRO and National Informatics Centre.
• The training programme was conducted in the last week of August, 2016.

What is geo tagging?

• Geotagging- It is the process of adding geographical identification like latitude and longitude to various media such as a photo or video. Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information from a device. It provides users the location of the content of a given picture.
• Geomapping-a visual representation of the geographical location of geotagged assets layered on top of map or satellite imagery

About MGNREGA:

• MGNREGA is the largest social security scheme in the world — guaranteeing 100 days of unskilled manual work to all rural households in India.
• Last year, about 235 crore person-days of work were generated under the scheme. The MGNREG Act actually gives rural households the right to work — making it obligatory for the State to give them work on demand.
• Household could actually sue them for not doing so — at least on paper. The work is usually on projects to build durable assets like roads, canals, ponds and wells.
• In reality, there are quite a lot of rules on how the money may be spent.
• The Act stipulates a minimum wage-material ratio of 60:40. The average wage per day per person in 2016-17 was 161.
• One in four persons lives below the poverty line in rural India. Ever since the launch of this scheme in 2006, it has changed the nature of the rural labour market.
• It gave an opportunity to rural households to earn minimum income by getting job cards under this scheme.
• There are 12 crore job cards as of today. While the poor have used it to climb out of poverty, the not-so-poor used it as a measure to supplement their income by working during lean agriculture periods.

By: Vishal