States turn to dubious technology for saving girl child With the country’s child sex ratio hitting an all-time low—944 girls for every 1,000 boys—states are turning to a monitoring device to fix the imbalance. Public health activists say the device, called Silent Observer, is more hogwash than an answer. Silent Observer can be fitted into sonography machines to allow the authorities to monitor and record pre-natal ultrasound scans taken by doctors. It...
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CAG net for all rural development schemes
-The Hindu The government has announced that all rural development programmes, including the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, would be brought under the Auditing ambit of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The outlay on rural development programmes during the current fiscal has been put at Rs. 88,000 crore. “You will be happy to know that for the first time the government has decided to bring all...
More »The sums don’t add up
-Live Mint It has cost me followers on Twitter, forced the government’s auditor to take the extreme step of sending an official (he misrepresented himself as an Election Commission official) to a Mint reporter’s residence, and attracted criticism about Mint being the government’s lapdog. So, why have we been writing about irregularities in the way the Comptroller and Auditor General of India conducted its audit of the so-called 2G scam? After all,...
More »Jairam brushes aside objections, backs Gujarat NREGS audit model by Ravish Tiwari
Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday gave a thumbs-up to the independent social audit mechanism adopted by the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government for the NREGS. He brushed aside reservations expressed by a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the apex monitoring agency for the rural job guarantee scheme, while endorsing Gujarat’s model. “Let there be multiplicity of mechanisms. They need to be independent and transparent. It can be...
More »NAC rules for Montek on poverty plans by Radhika Ramaseshan
The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council has listed dos and don’ts for Montek Singh Ahluwalia on the special component plan that forms a part of the five-year plan devised by the Planning Commission. The council has focused on the Dalits in the special plan that has two sub-plans: one for Dalits and the other for tribals. The council’s working group on Dalit issues — Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi are in the...
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