The much-vaunted NREGA has defaulted on many of its promises “There are many households in our village who have NREGA cards but have not sought work for over two years,” says 32-year-old Umesh Kumar, gram pradhan of Bhainswal village, in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Kumar recounts having to actually go around persuading people to come for work “whenever we get projects for implementation under NREGA”. This first-time...

The drama in the Rajya Sabha showed that the UPA government was not willing to go even by the will of Parliament. This gives rise to fundamental questions about the functioning of Indian democracy. The year 2011 will be remembered in India as the year of the campaign against corruption and for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The campaign began in January 2011 in the backdrop of the publicity that accompanied the...

-The Economic Times   States owe rural job seekers more than Rs 68 crore in unemployment dole, undermining the effectiveness of the government's flagship rural jobs guarantee scheme that has millions of workers in its fold. Workers enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are entitled to unemployment allowance if they are not provided a job within 15 days of applying for it. Although the allowance is to...

River Brahmaputra has eaten more than half of Asia's largest riverine island Majuli over the last 60 years. With land disappearing, there is progressive loss of the traditional means of livelihood of its people, leading to their displacement. Some lately are migrating even as far away as Andhra Pradesh, finds out Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty after a visit. Farmer Sridhar Bora stops mid-way as he brings down his axe on a tree...

Though Anna Hazare gets much of the credit for focusing the national spotlight on corruption, India was only too aware of the problem even before his agitation. According to a Pew Research poll in October 2010 (six months before Hazare emerged on the national scene), 98 per cent of Indians indicate corrupt political leaders as a “very big” or a “moderately big” problem. Hazare’s campaign did not attune Indians to...