-The Deccan Chronicle   Identification of work under the Rs 650 crore AP Rural Connectivity programme of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has come to a halt in the state. A local bodies association from Nalgonda approached the High Court with a plea that the identification of work under the scheme should be entrusted to local bodies and not the government department. The High Court put a stay on further...

The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information has rejected Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal bill and said it had sent its version of the proposed anti-graft law to the parliamentary standing committee that is examining the Centre’s draft. At a media interaction today, NCPRI members Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, who are also part of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), emphasised the importance of the standing committee which, they...

In her pre-Independence Day address, the President of India advocated the need for enhanced transparency and accountability in government, stressing the need for the adoption of rational and practical approaches in addressing these challenges. Her choice of qualifiers is significant, since the need for reform is especially being felt in government contracts, with recent government initiatives such as enacting a formal public procurement law for India, and for laying down...

August is usually the preferred month fo­r family holidays in Eu­­rope, because of ab­­undant sunshine and warm weather. In India, normally, this is the south-west monsoon season and a busy period for farmers. This year, ho­wever, several farm families in coastal Andhra Pradesh, the ri­ce bowl of the country, are repo­rted to have declared ‘crop holiday’. This is because the rice mills have not been lifting even last years’ crop....

-The Business Standard   Much depends on a strong implementation framework but the imposition of a cap by the Planning Commission could lead to arbitrary exclusions. Himanshu Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University The methodology, which is based on the framework suggested by the Saxena Committee, uses indicators that have been refined using a large-scale pilot survey There are over 400 million poor (the number varies depending on which estimate you...