The flexipool of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds has been the juiciest target for fund plunderers. The head under which huge budget was earmarked for activities like construction and strengthening of healthcare facilities, provided ample scope for pilferage. The pattern of spending on infrastructure building and maintenance proves how extravagant UP has been on this count. Every single year, since the inception of the NRHM in 2005-06, the state...

Over the last few decades thenon-party volunteer organisations have been much more effective in Indian public space and more articulate in policy debates than the traditional Left parties. This essay, while recognising the manifold achievements of these organisations, reflects on the serious limitations of the activities of the voluntary sector and argues that when they usurp certain roles they can become a threat to representative democracy. [Pranab Bardhan (bardhan@econ.berkeley.edu) is at...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday gave Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh the green signal for his proposal to integrate in one bill the provisions for land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement. After calling on Dr. Singh for the first time since he assumed office, Mr. Ramesh told The Hindu that he had sought the Prime Minister's approval for a single Bill to cover the two issues, whereas his...

With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention. “We will be writing to the Prime Minister that there should not be a blanket ban on making RTI applicable to PPP projects,” said an Information Commissioner, following a decision at the commission’s last meeting. The CIC wanted the...

-The Telegraph   The Tata Motors counsel today told Calcutta High Court that the “first attacks” on the company came in the form of public interest litigations that had questioned the process of land acquisition for the Nano factory in Singur. “In 2007, several PILs were filed in Calcutta High Court challenging the validity of the process of land acquisition in Singur. The government and the company were made respondents (in the PILs)....