Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech lays emphasis on social welfare measures Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech in the Rajasthan Assembly here on Wednesday laid emphasis on “positive results” of the State Government's work during the previous year for development of various sectors, and made a number of announcements for the welfare of different sections of society. In a significant declaration, Mr. Gehlot said a State-level Advisory Council would be constituted shortly in...

While other Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Ministers are in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, Jayant Patil is trying to make a difference in Maharashtra. Divested of his finance portfolio which went to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Mr. Patil, now Rural Development Minister, has embarked on an ambitious programme of tree plantation and rural sanitation, combined with planned development of villages for the first time. In a whirlwind tour...

More than a hundred officials from various government and non government agencies observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to slain Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) activist Niyamat Ansari at a consultation session organised by Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) to discuss the challenges facing the scheme and its future today. Deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, who was the chief guest on the occasion, faced a barrage of...

The government wants to make its rural jobs guarantee programme more open to scrutiny and empower its beneficiaries by getting Panchayats (village councils) to periodically disclose information about the scheme’s functioning in that area. To this end, the ministry of rural development has issued an advisory to village Panchayats, making it mandatory for them to convene regular gram sabhas (village general bodies). The initiative is also aimed at making the scheme...

The GoM to determine the norms for coalmine clearance in reserve forests, largely in tribal areas, and the parallel exercise to give back forest lands to tribals is not about the environment, but about forest policy. The divergence of interests between national use of forests, ecological balance and needs of local people should be recognised. However, the tribal affairs ministry is responsible for the Forest Rights Act and the coal...