Is drought being used as an excuse to delay the national Food Security Act? An informal network of organizations and individuals involved in the Right to Food Campaign believe so. The campaign groups are demanding that a national consultative process on an improved draft bill must be started immediately so that the proposed Food Security Act could be passed as soon as possible. The campaigners also demand that exports of...

Several civil society organizations and citizens who believe that a section of government and bureaucracy should not be allowed to dilute the right to information (RTI), staged a daylong protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi today (November 14, 2009) against the attempts to dilute the historical Act. (See the press release below for details) The civil society organizations, led by the National Council for the Peoples’ Right to Information...

AMIT KUMAR must be one of the few bankers in the world turning away depositors. The manager of a village bank in the Indian state of Rajasthan, he was reluctant to take a cheque for 1m rupees ($21,200) from the elected head of the village, or sarpanch. The cheque was meant to pay hundreds of villagers for their work under India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which guarantees 100...

Anxious to spur up the rural economy in the naxal-affected districts of the country, the Centre has underlined the imperativeness to implement the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in a more meaningful manner. Rural Development Department secretary Rita Sharma took up the matter with the Chief Secretaries of 15 States to impress upon them the need to ensure that the rural household received their due entitlements in accordance with...

“Imperative to prepare a dependable list for West Bengal”  KOLKATA: The inclusion of names in West Bengal’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) list should not be determined by political considerations but by economic benchmark, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Wednesday. “The list must be prepared on the basis of one’s economic status and poverty and not on the basis of political considerations,” Mr. Bhattacharjee told a workshop organised by the...