-The Indian Express   The rain gods seem to have ignored the once-fertile region of Sambalpur with farmers fighting drought for the third successive cultivating season. The drought situation led yet another farmer of Western Orissa to end his life, third in a week. The two deaths earlier this week were reported from Bargarh district. On Friday, a 25-year-old farmer, Samir Kumar Naik of Ramtileimal village in Paruabhadi gram panchayat under Kuchinda block...

The rural development ministry has proposed several changes in the rural job guarantee programme to ensure timely payment of wages and eradicate graft at a time when the Congress party-led ruling alliance has come under fire for poor governance and its failure to tackle corruption. The ministry has listed nine challenges to the proper functioning of the programme and proposed possible modifications in a note. The challenges include ensuring demand-driven legal...

The finance ministry has asked the telecom department not to entrust state-owned BSNL with the Rs 20,000-crore project to build a nationalbroadband network to take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. It has recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV), consisting of many mobile phone companies, be entrusted with implementing this project, while adding that all stakeholders should be chosen through a transparent and competitive bidding process. The telecom department had identified...

-The Times of India   GARHWA: Largescale irregularities, including non-payment of wages, fake job cards, lack of awareness and non-conduct of social audit in some panchayats came to the fore at a district-level public hearing at a social audit programme of MGNREGA held at the local Nilamber Town Hall here on Thursday. The results of the audit for each gram panchayat were read out. This included not only discrepancies and irregularities but also...

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not. If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is...