The government is scurrying for an alternative to its plan on engaging private sector in providing urban amenities in rural areas. After a good initial response that saw more than 90 companies showing interest in the scheme - Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas, or PURA, - the Rural Development Ministry has received only eight pilot proposals from six companies. Of the 45 shortlisted, most, including big players like Reliance...

‘Law needed to monitor selection of party candidates' West Bengal ahead of other four States which contested Assembly elections Despite promises of women's participation, mere134 of 1,263 candidates women Thirty-five per cent of the MLAs elected in the recently concluded Assembly elections in West Bengal have criminal cases pending against them as against an average of 33 per cent of those in the four other States that underwent Assembly elections, according to the...

The debate over the National Food Security Act has been reduced to a circus for political parties, NGOs and the National Advisory Council to perform verbal calisthenics. The discussion on who is entitled, who is not entitled and who should be entitled has gone on for over two years. The discourse is deteriorating into informed nit-picking. The time for debate is over; the time for decision is overdue. Let us get...

Even as she said that she would welcome the Tatas setting up a unit at Singur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said here on Wednesday that the agreement signed between Tata Motors and the previous government for the Nano project would be put in the public domain within a day or two. Briefing the Press after her second Cabinet meeting since assuming office last weekend, she said: “As a reciprocal gesture, I...

After getting a earful about the proposed Areva nuclear reactor from disgruntled farmers in Jaitapur, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh heard a sobering assessment of the Areva's Finnish reactor project — which is running four years behind schedule, with cost overruns hitting 2.7 billion euros — from that country's nuclear regulator. In a presentation made to Mr. Ramesh and a visiting Indian delegation in Finland earlier this week, Finnish regulator STUK...