-Live Mint   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is advocating a new approach to fighting the Maoist insurgency that has gripped 78 districts so far. Apart from development and security, the approach involves politics and justice, he said. In an interview, Ramesh warned that in the rush to attain high growth rates, India was placing the interests of tribals below that of mining firms. The minister suggested the setting up of a...

-The Hindu   To provide water supply, drainage, solid waste management and street lighting  If a rural area boasts a high population — well above 5,000, sometimes as high as 20,000 — with most of its workforce in non-farm jobs, is it a village or a town? For almost 4,000 such areas, the definition is unclear: the census calls them towns, but since they have gram panchayats rather than municipal corporations, the government...

-The Times of India   Missile man APJ Abdul Kalam's vision of bridging the urban-rural divide through a new scheme is set to take off, with the Planning Commission agreeing to allocate Rs 1,500 crore in the 12th five-year plan and the Centre likely to start 15 projects this year.  The Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) would target development in 'census towns' by undertaking key activities like sanitation, water supply,...

Araria, Bihar: If the government had bought bicycles to give them to schoolgirls, you would have had a bicycle scam in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar famously said, explaining why he gave bicycle vouchers to families. But when it came to giving land to landless Mahadalit families — the poorest and most marginalised of Dalits — the government forgot this wisdom.   Result: Allegedly acting in concert, government officials and brokers ganged...

I read Aman Sethi's piece on the Saranda Development Plan (“Nine months on, police camps sole development in Saranda plan”, June 4) with great interest but with greater anguish. Before I deal with his main charge — that private mining interests are behind the SDP — I want to lay out what the SDP is all about. It is the first systematic experiment in combining a security-oriented and development-focussed approach...