-PTI   Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said he would visit some of the Naxal-hit areas in Orissa to oversee implementation of different social welfare schemes like MGNREGA, PMGSY, IAY and National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). Ramesh, who would start field tour from tomorrow morning, was scheduled to arrive here this night. "Focus of my visit is to see implementation of rural development schemes in Naxal-hit districts of Orissa," Ramesh told...

-The Times of India   Union minister of state for planning, science and technology and earth sciences Ashwini Kumar on Saturday expressed his dissatisfaction over the poor implementation of MGNREGA projects in Jharkhand alleging less than half of the households were provided with job cards. Kumar, on a two-day visit to the state, dwelt most part of his interaction with the media here trying to convince people about the "irrelevance" of the social...

Fighting the insurgency will need careful planning and sustained innovation. But New Delhi seems to have only big sacks of cash and even bigger words. Eleven weeks after the annihilation of an entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force in a Maoist ambush in April 2010 near the village of Tarmetla — the largest single loss India has ever suffered in a counter-insurgency campaign — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

Members of Parliament, cutting across party lines, have demanded an increase in the wages and workdays of the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the flagship programmes of the UPA government, so as to insulate them from the galloping inflation. The demands were made by the members, including those of the ruling Congress-led ruling coalition, at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee on the...

The newly-appointed Minister for Tribal AffairsKishore Chandra Deo, in an interview to ET, outlines the government's new strategy that focuses on prioritising addressing rights of tribals and forest dwellers as the pre-condition to development in remote and combating Left-wing Extremism. Excerpts: There have been problems with the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, a landmark legislation of the UPA-I government. The problems have been to a great extent on account...