Monija Khatun has not got her salary as ad-hoc teacher for 17 months, youth in Soliya village in Jharkhand have got no work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) for the last five months and half of the newly constructed wells have collapsed in another village. These are just a few stories from a Naxal affected district of Jharkhand, where people feel alienated from the development process, even...

-The Business Standard   Worried over allegations of corruption in many government programmes, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has requested the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to audit all the schemes under his ministry. Ramesh met Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the state secretariat today, the last day of his three-day visit to the state. “To maintain transparency, I have requested the CAG to engage special Auditor Generals in each state to...

The Union government on Monday asked the States to prepare a below poverty line (BPL) list by March, census for which is now on, so that the needy are readied to enjoy the benefits to be rolled out under the 12th Five Year Plan. Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh hoped the States would prepare the list at the earliest. The Centre would, by December-end, complete its exercise of generating...

CGNet Swara in Chhattisgarh is a mobile radio platform that has helped bring tribal issues to national attention. MAHADEV SINGH, a Baiga tribal person, hails from a village situated atop a forested hill near Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. While most of the neighbouring villages are electrified and welfare schemes from the government reach them to an extent, Mahadev's village has lost out in this regard owing to its inaccessibility. Mahadev and his...

The bidirectional relationship between economic development and health justifies greater investment in the health sector. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has been described as one of the largest and most ambitious programmes to revive health care in the world and has many achievements to its credit. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It has increased health finance, improved infrastructure...