Chhattisgarh tribals punished for exercising rights under Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act It was unconstitutional, violation of PESA, says petition It was pushed by local administration, politicians to set up thermal power plant One morning in March 2010, residents of Premnagar awoke to discover they were villagers no more. An administrative notification had dissolved Premnagar's village council or gram panchayat and replaced it with a city council or nagar panchayat. Unbeknownst to...

More things change more they remain the same! UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has given her full support; two Congress chief ministers have written to the Prime Minister; a High Court (A.P) has ruled that the current wage rate violated the Minimum Wages Act 1948 --- but the rural workers are still getting the same old rate.  When the MGNREGA workers lifted their 47-day dharna at Jaipur after the Centre and...

Can we afford to leave MG-NREGA alone? Why is the civil society crying foul? Are the rural activists demanding too much? Is the UPA-II trying to take back what UPA-I gave before the elections? Let us face it, the MG-NREGA is in a big crisis. NAC members like Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze have alleged (See links below) that the present remuneration of rural workers is declining by the day and it...

U.S. President Barack Obama's interaction with the inhabitants of Kanpura village in Ajmer district of Rajasthan through video-conferencing on Sunday gave him a glimpse of the information technology revolution in rural India that extends the benefits of modern technology and services to the grassroots to improve the quality of people's lives. Union Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot led the rural group during the 10-minute interface at the...

An indefinite mazdoor haq (labourers right) satyagraha began at the Industrial Park near Statue Circle to press for the labourers' various demands. The satyagraha is spearheaded by Suchna Evum Rozghar Ka Adhikar Abhiyan. The demands of the agitators include increasing the wages of the NREGS workers to Rs 200 per day. The state government had recently increased the minimum wages of the labourers but the NREGA workers' rate is fixed at...