Ram Dia Singh was ready to chuck in his life as a farmer in northern India to embrace that of an ascetic in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. When he consulted his guru in the hill town of Solan, instead of being welcomed into a holy order he was instructed to return to the land and do good works among fellow farmers who increasingly struggle to eke out a living...

Three ostensibly disparate recent events have left me pondering about a lurking common thread among them: the Egypt uprising, PM’s appointment of a Cabinet-rank advisor for skills development and the fifth anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). What could be common among unrest in the Arab world, a seemingly inconspicuous government appointment and a fifth anniversary of a social welfare programme? The answer is youth,...

To invest the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) funds in a “fruitful” way, the state’s Department of Rural Development has decided to create a banana plantation over 1 lakh acres. The project will take off in July and will benefit around 1.5 lakh farmers, said Manoj Kumar Singh, the state’s Secretary of Rural Development and Horticulture and Food Processing. Singh was the Chief Guest of a “Mango Gosthi and...

The Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 notified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, should be viewed by State governments and municipal authorities as a good blueprint for a much-needed civic clean-up. The Central Pollution Control Board estimates the consumption of plastic products in India to be of the order of eight million tonnes a year. This ranges from shopping bags to household and industrial material. The volume...

By stubbornly overruling the National Advisory Council, the government risks defeating its purpose as a body that speaks for the poor and the disadvantaged. HAS the Manmohan Singh government begun to regard the National Advisory Council (NAC) as an adversary who should be undermined? Going by their exchanges on key issues such as food security, wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes...