Union Rural Development Minister C P Joshi on Saturday said the Gujarat government has not been able to implement the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Grantee Act schemes up to the mark. Joshi, who is also the president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association, was in Vadodara to watch the Ranji Trophy tie between Rajasthan and Vadodara. “There have been complaints from Gujarat about the implementation of the NREGA schemes and during the...
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Enter the watchdog by KP Shashidharan
Recently an interesting article appeared in The New York Times on how after the completion of a social audit at Nagarkurnool in Andhra Pradesh, villagers punished a local official for swindling funds allocated to the central government's flagship project, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. The irate villagers tied the official's hands and paraded him around the neighbouring villages. This is not a one-off incident; similar accounts have...
More »Why microfinance is not half the villain it seems to be by R Jagannathan
A man, crawling on all fours, is searching for something under a tree on a hot summer’s day. A curious passerby stops and asks: “What are you looking for?” The man replies: “I’ve lost my watch.” The passerby asks: “Are you sure it fell near this tree?” The answer: “It’s cooler looking in the shade”.Governments work something like this. They do what they think is easier to do rather than...
More »Tackling hunger by Purnima S Tripathy
The NAC suggests steps to ensure food security, but its recommendation for ‘selective universalisation' of the PDS is criticised. INDIA is home to some 230 million undernourished people – that is, 27 per cent of all undernourished people in the world. Worse still, more than half of all child deaths in India are because of malnutrition, and over 1.5 million children in the country are at the risk of being malnourished...
More »Civil society stars to push Sonia's 'inclusive' agenda by Nitin Sethi
UPA's 'Planning Commission' for its development agenda - the National Advisory Council - is in place. The Congress high command has chosen a constellation of individuals with formidable reputations to steer the social agenda in UPA's second term. The watchdog, to be headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, will include Madhab Gadgil, Harsh Mander, M S Swaminathan, Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, N C Saxena, Farha Naqvi, Anu Aga, Narendra Jadhav,...
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