The Government has revised the wages for unskilled manual workers under the national rural employment guarantee scheme by indexing it to inflation, Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said today. He told the Rajya Sabha during Question Hour that the original National Rural Employment Guarantee Act provides for wages to be indexed to the Consumer Price Index for agricultural labour. Against the Rs 100 per day wages originally approved, actual wages given are...

Among the many reasons cited for India to proceed ahead with the Unique Identification (UID) project -that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure and that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes -   the most specious is perhaps the claim that it will help India reach her public health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite impressive economic growth in...

In an address to the Berlin Agriculture Ministers meeting last month, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy said export Restrictions are a prime cause of recent surges in global food prices, and countries should find other ways of securing domestic supplies (“WTO chief: Alternatives to food export curbs needed”, Business Standard, January 23). Though export Restrictions are an important contributor to rising food prices, they are by no...

A 50-year-old man, allegedly associated with a city-based builder, has been arRested for threatening an RTI activist - who was the first to expose the Adarsh scam - police said today. Danny Abraham, who is said to be associated with a builder involved in Bombay Improvement Trust (BIT) redevelopment project, was arRested last night following an argument with RTI activist Santosh Daundkar. Abraham has been booked under sections 341 (wrongful Restraint), 336...

Four mega-programmes of the government, meant to tackle big-ticket issues like child nutrition, school education, health and employment, appear to be faltering not because funds are short but because adequate manpower has not been put in place. This is the surprising finding of a new study done by the Center for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), a New Delhi based think tank. The four mega-programs are Integrated Child Development Services...