-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has raised wages under the rural job guarantee scheme - by the princely sum of one rupee a day in many states. The increase is the lowest in the 11-year history of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and leaves its wage rates in 11 states stuck far below their minimum wages, set by the state governments. The eastern states are the worst hit. As...

-Scroll.in Botched-up beneficiary lists have denied the needy the government rations to which they are legally entitled. Even though few in Eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Baksha village have ever seen the internet, every man, woman and child there knows the word online. Online for them means standing in a queue outside a computer shop with a bundle of documents that the shopkeeper consults as he types away into the computer. At the end...

-Village Square High levels of arsenic in the water supply is afflicting many villages in Eastern Uttar Pradesh but the government hasn’t been able to design and implement any program to contain the menace Ballia (Uttar Pradesh): Ekawana Rajpur is a village in Belhari administrative block along the banks of the Ganga and 16km from Ballia town in Eastern Uttar Pradesh where villagers commonly suffer from afflictions such as itchy skin lesions,...

-Vikalp The paddy cropping and harvesting season has been concluded and the Rabi crops (mainly wheat) is seeded into the vast agricultural plains of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The region is known to be highly dependent upon agriculture for livelihood and food security, but it is also known as one of the economically backward-regions of the country. The persistent negligence by the government to develop a mechanised crop procurement system (through Food...

-NDTV Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh: The cash crunch in the aftermath of the government's ban on Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes is bad enough in metros with block-long queues. But how bad is it in the small towns of India? Deep in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, in Vindhyachal and Mirzapur, NDTV did a reality check. And the results were staggering. The journey started at 9 am, outside the ICICI bank ATM in the...