-Tehelka.com Cleanliness of Indian cities cannot be ensured without job security, safety gear and competitive wages for sanitary workers. In a unique address to the nation on 2 October - Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary - Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his commitment to devote 100 hours every year to sweeping the floor, picking up the waste and dusting his windows. He also urged everybody to do the same so that Indian cities...

-ABPLive.in New Delhi: A host of activists and academics have appealed to Narendra Modi to nip any move to dilute the 100-day village job scheme after rural development minister Nitin Gadkari brushed aside objections from within his own ministry. In a letter signed by over a hundred citizens, the signatories that included Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Jean Dreze, Harsh Mander, Prabhat Patnaik and Abhijit Sen sought the Prime Minister's "immediate assurance" that...

-FirstPost.com With the hype of his Madison Square Garden show overshadowing everything else, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit was dubbed as a great bilateral victory for India. As the popular consensus went, Modi wowed both the Indian Americans and American politicians and even managed to get a joint op-ed article with President Barack Obama in the Washington Post stressing the importance of the partnership between the two countries. Was it really...

-DNA Now only 51% funds meant for the job scheme will be spent on employment, while the rest will be spent on purchasing material Incorporating major changes in UPA government's flagship scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) quietly, the NDA government has converted it to an asset-driven programme rather than just generating jobs, which according to the officials in rural development ministry is going to affect 5 crore...

-Down to Earth Sivasankaran's land grabbing spree has threatened millions of livelihoods, says report Indian origin businessman Chinnakannan Sivasankaran has engaged in aggressive land grabbing of more than half a million hectares across Africa, Asia and South America, putting millions of livelihoods at risk. This was revealed in a detailed report released by Barcelona-based non-profit GRAIN on Tuesday. The report says Sivasankaran diverted 0.56 million hectares of food-producing land to production of palm...