-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Keeping his promise to focus on creating durable assets under the UPA's flagship rural employment guarantee programme, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has made changes to the programme's guidelines. In a letter sent to all chief ministers, Ramesh announced a clarification to the operational guidelines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which would allow for use of funds to create durable assets. The clarification relates...

-The Economic Times Nothing can be more ironic than to have food inflation at 18% (August 2013 over last August) in a country that takes pride in enacting the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and bestowing "the right to food" to 67% of its population by promising 5 kg cereals per capita per month (pcpm) at highly subsidised rates. Given that cereals consumption is 10.7 kg pcpm, people will have to face...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...

-The Hindu The huge deficit in blood availability outside urban centres must jolt the government into legalising unbanked blood supply Twenty-year-old Putul, living in a village 70 km from a district headquarters town in Chhattisgarh, had been in labour for two days and a night. It was her first pregnancy. In order to hasten labour, the local quack administered several injections that increased her uterine contractions. Forty hours after the onset of...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As many as nine central government departments, including the railways and the ministries of finance, commerce and petroleum, could be in the dock for flouting employment laws governing contract workers. The Central Labour Commissioner has sought compliance reports for contract workers deployed in several ministries, including the commissioner's own office in the labour ministry, which uses the services of 20 contract employees via a private software firm. The...