The land acquisition process for Haryana’s first nuclear power plant has started at Gorakhpur village (around 175 km from Delhi) in Fatehabad district. The site has been finalised by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for setting up the state’s first 4X700 mw nuclear power plant. As per the officials of Haryana Power Generation Corporation (HPGCL)—the nodal agency for the project—the land acquisition officer has already started issuing notices...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has revitalised the rural landscape across the country, stands diminished in the land of its birth, Rajasthan, hijacked and held to ransom by vested interests and stripped of its backbone of an open social audit. As the Andhra experience has shown, there is one ingredient that can bring back its vitality: institutionalising citizen audits. But, is the Rajasthan government up to...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has ushered in a revolution of sorts in rural India by providing employment to people in the country’s dusty villages. Now, the state has taken a lead in ensuring that many more citizens can benefit from the Act. Maharashtra is probably the first state to appoint Ombudsmen and deputy Ombudsmen in most of its districts for effective monitoring of the centrally-sponsored...

India is planning to replicate China's barefoot doctor experiment in the legal field aiming to train one lakh para-legal volunteers who would tell rural people not to sleep over their rights violations and encourage them to take recourse to justice system for remedial measures. Nearly 30 years after China abolished the barefoot doctor scheme under which farmers were given basic medical and para-medical training to work in rural areas, the...

`Financial Inclusion' as defined by the committee of financial inclusion is the process of ensuring access to financial services and timely and adequate credit, where needed by vulnerable groups, such as weaker sections and lower income groups at an affordable cost. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has selected Baikunthpur village in Narayanpur block of Mirzapur district to provide banking services to the villagers under its financial inclusion programme. The programme...