The popular impression is that starvation deaths happen mainly because the information about potential victims fails to reach authorities. But can it amount to murder if a starvation death is caused despite adequate warning? A recent Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report tells us a story of corruption and negligence leading to starvation and death in Odisha. Worse still is the fact that many more villagers await the same fate...

Despite the Rs 5,631 crore — to be the highest in the country, which the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh had spent under the MG-NREGA in 2010-11, but it failed to show any good work carried by it. Its not just Uttar Pradesh, but half of the states did not find any work worth to be nominated for a national award for best performing panchayats in implementation of NREGA in 2010-11. There...

In Bihar, the coupon system to distribute PDS grain fails to prevent corruption. AT the Jamaluddin gram panchayat in Patna district on January 26, 2007, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched an ambitious reform of the public distribution system (PDS) in Bihar: a coupon system. He claimed that it would “empower the poor and stop black-marketeering” and that it was “not a simple coupon but a powerful weapon in the hands...

In Chhattisgarh, people swear by the PDS, which has witnessed a revival since 2004 when the government revamped it. IN Chhattisgarh, as part of the survey on public distribution system (PDS) versus cash transfers, a team of student volunteers visited 12 villages spread across Mahasamund and Sarguja districts. The State may have been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent times, but the way its PDS worked...

The implementation of the ‘100 days work' scheme in West Bengal had become a poll issue during the last parliamentary and assembly elections as had some other Centrally-funded rural development projects. But despite a change in government in the State, little seems to have changed on that front ultimately leading to a somewhat hurried shunting out of a Minister from his Department. The decision taken by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to...