The United Nations began laying the groundwork today for a global “social protection floor” that would guarantee food security, health services for all and old-age pensions, with a senior official stressing that all that is lacking is the political will for an initiative needing minimum investment. “Social security is a human right. We’ve forgotten that for a very long time, but roughly only 20 per cent of the global population has...

With the number of non-governmental organisations growing in the country, the government is planning to bring them under a regulatory mechanism to make them accountable. As of now, there are no specific laws or regulations to regulate volunteerism in India. A task force, constituted to examine the issues related to the evolution of an independent, national level, self-regulatory agency for the voluntary organisations and develop accreditation methodologies by the Planning Commission,...

The ministry of finance and the Planing Commission have finally agreed on increasing gross budgetary support by 18% for the terminal year of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-2012). GBS is the monetary assistance provided by the Centre to implement schemes in five-year plans. The ministry of finance will allocate around Rs4.41 lakh crore as part of the planned expenditure in the Budget for the next fiscal, compared with an allocation of Rs3.73...

NGOs To No Go’s     * NGOs have mushroomed; so have instances of misappropriation of funds     * Not disclosing expenditure and receipts; nor revealing who funds them     * Not setting up NGO for the task it was funded for     * Flocking to 'hot' topics, inviting accusations of singing to industrialists’ tunes     * For every NGO supporting a cause, another springs up against that cause *** NGO numbers     * 3.3 million Number of NGOs...

India has finally woken up to the needs of the country's elderly. With the number of people in the 60-plus age group in India expected to increase to 100 million in 2013 and to 198 million in 2030, the health ministry is all set to roll out the National Programme for the Health Care of the Elderly (NPHCE). A ministry note, available with TOI, estimates that the elderly population will increase to 12% of...