-Outlook Lucknow: Taking note of media reports and state-level reviews over the delay in clearance of wages under the rural job scheme, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has written a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister akhilesh yadav urging him to ensure prompt payments. The letter, dated January 8, states that it has been mentioned in the law that payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) have...

-Newsclick.in With sixty percent children malnourished in the state, the implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services, the largest scheme to provide nutrition to children in the country, is nothing but a sham. Sitting outside her semi-pucca house in Bilgram block, Kasturi says, "My children get five fistful of panjiri once a month from the Aanganwadi Centre." Thirty-three year-old Kasturi has never, in her parents' village or her in-law's village seen an...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday shot off another letter to the akhilesh yadav government, accusing it of having failed to spend money given under the central schemes. This is Jairam's sixth dispatch to the SP government since it came to power in March, 2012. The letter to the chief minister focuses on the implementation of the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), a centrally-funded...

-Outlook Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government's 'Samajwadi Ambulance Service' may have been marred by controversy due to its name, but the ambulances under the scheme have seen the births of over 9,500 children in the state. "The ambulance service, which started on September 14 last by Chief Minister akhilesh yadav has become birth place for 9,644 children. It included three families, which had twins and two families which had triplets. All these...

-The Times of India Days after akhilesh yadav urged the media "to go and assess... at the ground level yourself", TOI visited a relief camp for the Muzaffarnagar riot-hit and found the conditions as wretched as before SC's rap to the UP govt for the dismal conditions LOI (Muzaffarnagar): Life is cheap at the riot victims' camp here. In the past weeks, 11 children have died here; 74 pregnant women, 24 in...