A conspiracy to siphon off MGNREGS funds to the tune of Rs 70 lakh by data manipulation has come to light in Jamkhandi taluk. The Hirepadasalagi gram panchayat members have alleged that fake bills have been created by entering false data in the Management Information System (MIS) meant exclusively to maintain accounts of the job guarantee scheme. The entire exercise has been carried out clandestinely without the knowledge of gram panchayat. The data...

Earlier this week, India's opposition parties came together in a rare show of unity to take to the streets in cities across the country. They protested against the government's recent decision to raise fuel prices after it scrapped its subsidy of petrol prices in an effort to cut the budget deficit. Supporters of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party joined hands with their ideological rivals among the Communists to paralyse normal life in...

A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...

The UN has said what the Congress had been bragging all the time. The international agency has hailed India’s rural job guarantee scheme, one of the flagship programmes of the UPA government, saying that it has reduced poverty and reversed inequality. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) in a report titled “What Will it Take to Achieve Millennium Development Goals? An International Assessment,” says the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has...

Pointing out that a disconnect exists between mass media and mass reality in India today, P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of TheHindu, said the media had lost its sense of priorities and was out of touch with the problems of a vast section of the population of the country. He was delivering the Silver Jubilee Lecture on “Mass media: But where are the masses?” at the Indira Gandhi National Open University...