-The Times of India CHENNAI: Chief minister J Jayalalithaa on Friday declared that all districts of Tamil Nadu, except Chennai, were drought-hit. After a disastrous monsoon and with Karnataka proving intractable on release of Cauvery water, experts said the CM's statement appeared calculated to buttress the state's case in court for immediate relief. But Jayalalithaa injected the declaration with a sense of urgency, saying finance minister O Paneerselvam would lead a high-level team...

-The Business Standard Channel to represent people intersted in public issues Anti-corruption activists Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan,  are planning to launch a television channel, which they say, will be non-profit and will focus on public issues. “We are starting a channel which will focus on public issues,” Bhushan told Business Standard. He indicated that the channel would not just be confined to people from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), but would be a...

-The Hindu They will be involved in the exercise in panchayats other than their own Chennai: Beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are going to be involved in carrying out social audit of works of the MGNREGS from April 1. To ensure that there is no conflict of interest, they will be engaged in the audit of village panchayats other than theirs. For each village panchayat, five persons...

-The Times of India While Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh waxed eloquent on the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and called it a key instrument for "financial inclusion" at a government conference in New Delhi on Saturday, latest data reveal a picture of declining employment generation under the scheme. Even more startling: Jobs created for the most marginalized sections - dalits and adivasis - have...

-Live Mint Parliamentary committee’s proposals on the food security Bill are an improvement over the original The standing committee of Parliament, set up to examine the National Food Security Bill (NFSB), has finally given its recommendations. With this, the Bill has moved one step closer to seeing daylight. The recommendations, which are not binding on the government, will now be considered by the Union cabinet before being put to vote in Parliament.   The...