Faced with the unfinished agenda - half way achievements under the Bharat Nirman mission projects like rural roads and houses and MDG goals staring in face - the government is preparing an army of 40 lakh volunteers to connect planning in New Delhi and implementation at the village level. TULIP (Total Unity for Livelihood, Innovation and Production), as 'the Bharat Nirman Volunteer' is christened would serve an anchor to spearhead programmes in...

Thousands of children and women die every year in India due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Why is it that, in the Mecca of medical tourism, the poor continue to be denied the right to health? A national television channel had a 30-minute special recently on how private hospitals are denying free medical treatment to poor patients. Under a quota, private hospitals are expected to provide medical treatment...

Work on India's sixth economic census will begin in 2012 as the government wants to give preference to enumeration of those living below the poverty line and a caste census. The economic census, which provides basic data on the number of enterprises and people employed in them, was originally planned to begin this month. "We are now looking to start fieldwork on economic census by February 2012," a senior official with...

Sanjay Dixit is a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, a statutory body set up under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). He was initially chosen by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi to head an NREGA cell in Uttar Pradesh where he has become an official whistleblower of sorts, unearthing several instances of fund diversion in many districts. He talks about the malaise in the five-year-old law that...

A division bench of the Allahabad High Court has held that the government order issued on August 25 for holding a fresh selection for the appointment of `gram rozgar sewak' (village employment worker) after every three years, is constitutional and within the legislative competence of the state government. Through the order, the court has set aside the single judge order in a special appeal filed by the state government through...