In a bid to ensure that those who are not provided work within the stipulated 15 days under the MGNREGA get the unemployment benefit, the government is about to introduce a uniform Form 6 across the state. The Form 6, where requisition is filled for work under NREGA, will also have a receipt attached which would be handed over to the worker as proof of when the work was sought. The...

The 1985 Lokpal Bill destroyed the raison d'etre of the institution of an ombudsman, but all successive governments copied it. PUBLIC anger was understandably aroused over the gross delay by Parliament in the last 40 years to enact a Lokpal Bill and with the toothless one that the government sponsored. It is not widely known that the delay was aggravated by deception and fraud in 1985. It was, however, emulated by...

For the first time, SHO also identified as one of the alleged perpetrators of crime The trial in the case was shifted to the Rohini Sessions Court last December ‘Families of the accused are threatening witnesses with dire consequences' Kamla, whose physically challenged daughter and husband were killed in the Mirchpur caste violence case in which 18 Dalit houses were also burnt in April last year, has identified 81 of the 98 accused...

A LEAFY VILLAGE in Kerala, Pathanpara, never found access to India’s electricity grid. That is why for the last several years, this village has been generating its own electricity. Raju, a dhoti-clad cashew nut farmer, operates Pathanpara’s five kilowatt (KW) micro hydropower plant. He lives in the village and earns a salary of Rs 2,250, paid by the People’s Electricity Committee (PEC). The power generated is shared equally by the village,...

They have all been killed quietly, leaving Devda just with 20 girls compared to 300 boys Avon Kanwar lives in fear. She is scared her food may be poisoned. She is afraid to sleep at night because she suspects she may be strangled. Avon, eight years old, is convinced her parents will kill her. “I don’t know where she hears such things,”says her father Sangh Singh, “We stopped killing girls...