-The Telegraph New Delhi: Panchayat officials often fob off people seeking work under the rural job guarantee scheme, keeping the programme's implementation poor in states such as Bengal and Assam, the Centre believes. Delhi has now asked the states to get their gram panchayat offices to organise a Rozgar Diwas (Employment Day) at every ward every month, where work applications will be submitted and recorded at a public meeting. Such gatherings will...

-The Hindu Mining companies have received favourable impact assessments even as they do great damage to the environment because regulators are willing to look the other way Last week, world leaders concerned about economic development got together at the International Monetary Fund, and gave a series of most instructive interviews. Our Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said that his problem was the slowing down of India's economic growth and reduction in government revenues....

-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Much work remains to be done if the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act has to mark a meaningful shift for India's adivasi communities. Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) is a multimedia journalist and researcher, and currently with the Publics and Policies program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Among the worst excesses committed in India's six decade-old democracy, the forcible displacment...

-The Hindu If the Adani group is allowed to continue its development projects in Kutch simply by ‘compensating' for their ecological damage, the Centre will set a dangerous precedent that lets money power trump environmental regulations The Adani Group may be fined Rs.200 crore for a series of environmental violations committed by their waterfront development, port and power plant projects in the Mundra taluka of Kutch district. The waterfront development project, which...