-PTI According to rural development ministry, there are no preconditions for getting employment under the scheme. New Delhi: The Centre is taking steps to ensure timely payment of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), out of which 85 per cent of wages have already been paid this fiscal, an official statement said. According to the statement released by the rural development ministry yesterday, there are no preconditions, including...

-TheWire.in While illegal mining is worrying, what is little understood is the enormous loot that is taking place legally. Mineral owners sometimes receive less than 5% of the value of minerals. The three iron ore scams in Karnataka, Goa and Odisha have some things in common. There were widespread and diverse breaches of the constitution, laws, rules and regulations. The environment was badly damaged. The minerals were being exhausted. Enormous corruption was...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday banned the use of petroleum coke and furnace oil in the National Capital Region, Haryana and Rajasthan by 34 industrial groups in its efforts to bring down pollution levels that have spiked in the industrial hubs of these areas Post-Diwali. These fuels, which emanate highly toxic gases, are banned in Delhi since 1996. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) lauded the directive as...

-The Indian Express Move to criminalise cyber speech will add impunity to power How to police a cyber space that has acquired the instincts of Frankenstein’s monster? In pursuit of answers, an expert committee submitted an interim report to the Union Home Ministry a couple of weeks ago. The recommended amendments to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are noteworthy for two reasons. One, they bring within the ambit of IPC (through amendments...

-Livemint.com While all of the Post offices in India are supposed to have internet (and be digitized by the end of the year), internet connectivity is non-functional at several units Last month I read an interesting article about India’s Postmen. It talked about the changing duties of Postmen and the changing role of Post offices. By the end of the article I was thinking of a scenario where our close to 2...