Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has done what his counterparts in other states failed to do. He convinced the Centre that its policy on disbursement of funds for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) was flawed and needed correction. At a meeting with Plan Panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Kumar pointed out the anomaly, which the government acknowledged and was quick to react. This resulted in...

A group of tribal women has declared a “ban” on the sale and consumption of liquor, while warning of imposing a hefty penalty on those defying the “prohibition” in Madhya Pradesh's Talanpur village. Fed up with husbands “who get drunk and beat up their wives, apart from wasting hard-earned Money,” the women in the village, about 180 km from here, have come together under the banner of ‘Mahila Samiti,' led by...

These days, Jhum cultivation also known as ‘slash and burn method of cultivation’, ‘shifting cultivation’ etc has been under continuous scanner for its productivity and ecological viability. This form of cultivation is followed widely in almost all the North Eastern States including the hill areas of Manipur. There are those who consider jhum cultivation as unproductive and ecologically disastrous so that people (understood as tribal people of the hill areas)...

Sanjay Dixit is a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, a statutory body set up under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). He was initially chosen by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi to head an NREGA cell in Uttar Pradesh where he has become an official whistleblower of sorts, unearthing several instances of fund diversion in many districts. He talks about the malaise in the five-year-old law that...

It is almost two years since the German Government had passed on the names and bank account details of eighteen Indians who had stashed their alleged ill-gotten wealth in the LGT bank of Liechtenstein, a well-known tax haven nation, 190 km from Munich, Germany. Germany had officially handed over the list to the Indian Government on 18 March 2009. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee have since...