-The Times of India   Only a handful of officials have read the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee Act. That was admitted by the officials, who attended a review meeting on the national rural employment guarantee scheme on Monday. The meeting was convened in the wake of complaints from the elected representatives during a Karnataka Development Programme (KDP) review meeting on June 27 when it was established that the district...

By exposing its lesser arm, is the petromin hiding bigger sins? Petro Fallout     * Murli Deora, who as petroleum minister sought the CAG audit and sanctioned a CVC probe, offers to quit his ministerial post     * CBI action reinforces CAG draft report findings blaming DGH for oversight in implementation of production-sharing contracts     * Unease in market, as yet another CBI probe into charges of DGH having favoured RIL in its...

Conditional cash transfers are necessary but not sufficient for improving health. Good government-funded health care is essential, as are schemes which address social determinants of health. The march of capitalism, with its reduced emphasis on public spending, while improving many national economies has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor. For millions of Indians, hunger is routine, malnutrition rife, employment insecure, health care expensive and livelihoods are under...

-Press Trust of India   In spite of achieving success in the bigger states, the UPA government's flagship MGNREGA scheme appears to have failed in fulfilling its objective in small and remote places like Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep. According to Rural Development Ministry data, no household or person was provided employment under the scheme in Daman and Diu in 2010-11, while it was only 2290 in...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...