Just two and half years ago, Kandhamal was India’s shame as a communal violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu seer left 38 people dead, thousands of houses and hundreds of churches burnt and vandalised and several thousand people scurrying to relief camps for safety. As Christian were slayed and attacked by VHP and RSS goons across the district, it forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to call it a...
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NAC focus back on job scheme, asks rural ministry for details by Ruhi Tewari
Along with the proposed food security legislation and the communal violence Bill that have been its focus until now, the reconstituted National Advisory Council (NAC) is beginning to focus again on the government’s marquee rural job guarantee scheme as well. The ministry of rural development has been told to make a presentation on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to a working group of the NAC on Friday,...
More »Tackling hunger by Purnima S Tripathy
The NAC suggests steps to ensure food security, but its recommendation for ‘selective universalisation' of the PDS is criticised. INDIA is home to some 230 million undernourished people – that is, 27 per cent of all undernourished people in the world. Worse still, more than half of all child deaths in India are because of malnutrition, and over 1.5 million children in the country are at the risk of being malnourished...
More »Communal violence bill: activists, government at loggerheads by Smita Gupta
From the framing of its first draft in 2005 to the heated debates that have followed it, the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill has been mired in controversy. The government feels that civil society organisations want to take over its powers; civil society organisations believe the government is simply not prepared to go far enough. Now, after five years of back and forth, the National Advisory Council...
More »NAC deals with new bills in first meet by Ruhi Tewari
The first meet of the newly constituted second National Advisory Council or NAC, which is expected to set the social agenda for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance or UPA government, on Thursday laid down its broad agenda for its functioning. The discussions, which lasted for over three hours, revolved around crucial legislations such as the Food Security Bill, the Communal harmony Bill and the Forest Rights Bill. The 14-member council later...
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