The Naveen Patnaik Government has made a major course correction in its populist scheme.   The rice Rs. 2-a-kg scheme would no longer include a privilege section - the above poverty line (APL) families in the backward KBK region. The privilege section enjoying the largesse included income tax payers, members of royal families, ministers, MPs, MLAs, government officials and big businessmen. Though belated, the decision will save about Rs. 34 crore to the...

Free bus passes to persons living with HIV were handed over to beneficiaries in Madurai and Dindigul districts by the respective Collectors. People living with HIV, who are receiving free anti-retroviral therapy (ART), had good reason to celebrate Pongal as they received the passes which would enable them to travel to the ART centres free of cost, officials said. While distributing the passes, Madurai Collector C. Kamaraj said that helping people...

Over 4,000 Chakma tribal people in Mizoram have been starving for the past few weeks, a non-governmental organisation said Thursday. "Over 800 Chakma tribal families comprising over 4,000 men, women and children in four villages in Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC) areas of southern Mizoram have been starving for several weeks," New Delhi based Mizoram Chakma Development Forum (MCDF) said in a letter to the Mizoram government. MCDF president Hemanta Larma said:...

In a move that might put the Union government in conflict with the states, the ministry of rural development has recommended merging the census to identify below poverty line (BPL) families with the caste census to accelerate the process of determining the number of poor, according to a person familiar with the matter. The caste census, conducted by the Registrar General of India, or RGI, is due to begin on 1...

Neither celebrity nor politician, Sita Murmu, is extraordinary because she is the great survivor of that `other India'. She is not a beneficiary of the job guarantee scheme MGNREGA and doesn't have a BPL card. In her 60s, she lives in a Bhubaneswar slum and describes herself as a tribal widow without any land, regular income or schooling but "surviving —that itself is enough". Railing at the false promises of...