The much-vaunted NREGA has defaulted on many of its promises “There are many households in our village who have NREGA cards but have not sought work for over two years,” says 32-year-old Umesh Kumar, gram pradhan of Bhainswal village, in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Kumar recounts having to actually go around persuading people to come for work “whenever we get projects for implementation under NREGA”. This first-time...

Days after chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy wished to see every police station in the state work like a corporate office and the complainant received warmly, a Right to Information (RTI) activist on Friday was nearly subjected to the third degree treatment by inspector K Srinivas Rao after he walked into Kukatpally police station, and only timely intervention by higher-ups saved him from being arrested and slapped with false cases....

-PTI The CBI on Saturday arrested a former official of a Uttar Pradesh government-owned public sector unit for his alleged involvement in the Rs 10,000 crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam.   Sources said the accused, GK Batra, former MD of Shreeton India, was arrested following a day-long intensive interrogation by agency sleuths. The CBI has so far arrested five persons including former UP Small Industries Corporation md Abhay Kumar Bajpai, former...

-The Hoot The brutally fatal silencing of three journalists along with the sharp rise in censorship of content in online media and the increasing cases of defamation marked the deterioration of the climate for free speech across India in 2011. Attacks on journalists continued to be high, with 24 recorded instances even as writers, journalists and lawyers bore the brunt of the intolerance of vigilante groups to dissenting opinion. The Free Speech...

The Planning Commission today said Nandan Nilekani’s unique identification (UID) numbers were a more practical option than P. Chidambaram’s smart cards when it comes to electronic transfer of benefits to the rural poor. Plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the UID numbers could be used even through “mobile telephones while the smart card can only be read by a card-reader”. The commission and the home ministry have both been pushing...