-The New Indian Express NAGAPATTINAM/KARAIKAL: With just two weeks left for pongal, the farming community along the Nagapattinam and Karaikal coasts was abuzz with preparation for reaping the harvest of six months' hard work. However, the tsunami on December 24, 2004 swallowed their paddy fields whole, bringing with it tonnes of mud and saline water. Ten years on, farmers are now posting twice the yield of their pre-tsunami days, with the...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Rural Development Year end Review -2014-15 The Ministry of Rural Development is likely to introduce Mobile Monitoring System for effective implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, MGNREGA. The Monitoring System will be introduced on a pilot basis to allow real time monitoring of all works, workers attendance and work site measurement. The move is likely to plug leakages in the rural job scheme. Moreover,...

-Business Standard Farmers still struggling for access to govt schemes The 70th report on the "Situation of Agricultural Households in India", released by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on Saturday, reveals that much is wrong with Indian farmers' economic status, despite several programmes being run by the government to raise their incomes. Over half of all farm households are heavily indebted; 26 per cent of them owe money to moneylenders who...

-The Hindu As solid waste management gets privatised, they will need to be rehabilitated Chennai: Keeping in mind the possibility of providing social entitlements to ragpickers and integrating them into an increasingly privatised solid waste management system, the Chennai Corporation is taking steps to issue identity cards to them. Working with Transparent Chennai, the civic body is conducting a survey. Last month, it enumerated the ragpickers at Kodungaiyur dumping yard. "There are about 200...

-Economic and Political Weekly India's scheduled tribes are among the most deprived socio-economic groups and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has great potential in tribal areas. While the Andhra Pradesh government has made an effort to ensure implementation of the scheme in the scheduled areas, the gap between administrative orders and the grass-roots level is wide. This article lists measures that could radically improve implementation of the scheme...