Agitators to stage indefinite dharna outside mini secretariat The agitating farmers of Gorakhpur-Kumharia village of Haryana have decided to stage an indefinite dharna outside the mini secretariat at Fatehabad, over 300 km from here, to protest against the acquisition of over 1,400 acres by the government for a nuclear power plant there. “We are not against technology; we just don't want it to be at the cost of farmers. We will convey...

The Konkan Bachao Samiti (KBS), which is opposing the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant (JNPP) in Ratnagiri, has said that several questions on the project remain unanswered. At a recent press conference, Vivek Monteiro and Adwait Pednekar of the KBS said several issues were raised at meetings held among the KBS, Janhit Seva Samiti (JSS) and officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the National Environmental Engineering...

An inter-ministerial meeting on infrastructure constraints ended up discussing the coal ministry’s accusations against the environment ministry of going slow in clearing mining projects that meet green norms. At the end of the meeting, the exasperated chairman of the group, a secretary from the cabinet secretariat, suggested the environment ministry should henceforth attend the meetings on infrastructure. The ministry should be present in the next meet and listen to the complaints...

The ubiquitousness of the mobile phone in urban areas and its spread in rural areas in India seem to have fed a notion — not substantiated by hard evidence — that there is a wide and deep market for such services in the countryside. Such a notion has remained largely unverified because of the scarcity of data on the extent of ownership of assets and access to services such as...

This will speed up payment of wages under employment guarantee scheme In a major step to alleviate delays in wage payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday launched an “e-Shakti Financial Inclusion” scheme – the first of its kind in the country. The scheme aims at providing about three crore villagers with ‘e-Shakti' biometric smart cards, with the Central Bank of...