Back in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), now called Mahatma Gandhi NREGS or MGNREGS, was offered as a tool to liberate Dalits and weaker sections in rural India by giving them employment. Five years down the line, a Union Ministry of Rural Development-sponsored investigation has found that the scheme has become “yet another instrument in the consolidation of the existing exploitative power structure”. The investigation report, which became available...

The arrest of BJP MP Dinu Solanki's nephew, in the RTI activist Amit Jethava's murder case, has reopened some interesting dossiers on the duo. Police officials, investigating this case, have laid their hands on reports prepared earlier on Dinu Solanki and his nephew Shiva Solanki in the break down of law and order in Kodinar in 2003. Three letters written by three senior police officials in 2003 laid bare a...

A Central team, led by a senior official of the Union Agriculture Ministry, arrived in West Bengal on Wednesday and held a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and three key Ministers and Departmental Secretaries before leaving for spot visits to the 11 districts declared drought-affected by the State government. Finance Minister Asim Kumar Dasgupta, who was also present at the meeting, told journalists at the Secretariat that the eight-member team...

Child mortality great barometer of economic progress ‘Prioritise the marginalised to curb mortality' Children from the poorest communities are three times more likely to die before they reach the age of 5 than those from high income groups, Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation has said. In a global report titled A Fair Chance at Life, the organisation said the policy to lower child mortality in India and elsewhere appeared to focus on...

A United Nations-backed conference aimed at advancing the rights of persons with disabilities concluded today with countries underscoring the need to continue building on recent momentum to ensure that the rights of the world’s estimated 650 million people with disabilities are protected and strengthened. Hundreds of delegates and civil society representatives took part in the three-day conference at UN Headquarters in New York to see how to better implement the Convention...