-The Hindu A unique cell phone-based networking system in Chhattisgarh helps Adivasi Gonds share local news and air grievances. Deep in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, a straightforward, earthy man named Naresh Bunkar, field co-ordinator of the Adivasi Santha Manch, picks up his mobile phone and dials +918050068000, a long-distance number in Bangalore. He immediately cuts off and waits. Within seconds, he gets a call from the dialled number, and he hears a...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Ahead of the general elections next year, the government will recruit 140 young graduates for a three-year Fellowship scheme to oversee better delivery of flagship programmes in backward and remote districts in the country. This is an extension of the ongoing Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF) scheme and will cost the government Rs 36 crore for a twoyear Fellowship while in the last year of...

-Newsclick.in Caste discrimination percolates down to the food plates for Musahar community in Madhepura district of Bihar reports Neha Dixit "The mahant of the Shankar Math told me to stay away from ultra-Left people the day I questioned the Collector about the hunger deaths in my village," recounts Prabhansh Manjhi. Prabhansh is from the Musahaar community in Madhepura district of Bihar. Estimated to be 2.3 million in the country, they are Mahadalits, one...

-Newsclick.in Mewat is a living example of how Haryana government has failed to look at malnutrition amongst adolescent girls as a socio-economic problem. Neha Dixit reports "Her father needed money for installing a tube well in the fields, we had no option," says Afra. She is the mother of Humra, 15, who passed away in the Punhana block of Mewat district in Haryana on September 22nd. She bled to death while delivering...

-The Business Standard The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows are being pampered with funds to serve for just two years   The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows scheme, announced two years ago, sounded like a novel way to connect educated youth to the problems of backward rural areas hit by Maoist violence. But it is now surrounded by questions as its financial size is now larger than the problem it seeks to solve...