Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today made all deputy commissioners accountable for implementation of governance reforms in a time-bound manner within their respective districts. They would also be expected to speed up NREGA-related projects. Sukhbir said their performance on these fronts would reflect in their annual appraisal reports. Reviewing the progress of administrative reforms in a meeting of all deputy commissioners, Sukhbir said that DCs of each district would be designated...

Two of the UPA's flagship programmes, the Unique Identity Number project (UID) and Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme are on a collision course. "I am not against technology, by I think linking the Unique Identity Number project to  NREGA can be very dangerous," said Jean Dreze, Member , National Advisory Council. Right now, all that a person needs to ask for work under NREGA is to fill up a form and get the...

The Kerala government has decided to detoxify' Kasaragod district which has been bearing the brunt of indiscriminate spraying of the highly toxic endosulfan in cashew plantations for the last two decades. All highly toxic Red and Yellow categories of pesticides, including endosulfan, will be banned in the district and the soil and water bodies will be frequently monitored for pesticide content to enable remedial measures, state agriculture minister Mullakkara Retnakaran told...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

A widening corruption scandal that has touched India’s prime minister sent the country’s stock markets down sharply on Friday and threatened to tarnish the country’s image as a rising economic power. Setting off the turmoil was a report from the country’s auditor earlier this week that about $40 billion in wireless spectrum license fees had been squandered by the government’s telecommunications and information technology minister. On Thursday, India’s Supreme Court criticized...