-The Hindu NABARD to manage Rs. 77,000-cr. corpus for scheme. India’s apex rural-development bank will manage a Rs. 77,000-crore corpus as part of a Central government push to complete 99 unfinished irrigation projects across the country by 2019, and bring water to 76.03 lakh hectares. The contours of the scheme were first made public by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech this February and involve finishing 149 projects overdue since...

Access to land and its resources is important since it determines the extent of poverty and deprivation one faces. Historically tribal populations and other traditional forest dwellers did not enjoy any legal entitlement such as ownership rights or user rights of the forest lands where they had been living since ages, both communally and individually. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) is, thus, seen as a progressive legislation that attempted to...

-The Hindu Health-care workers at the primary level must be given the knowledge and skills to provide NCD and associated risk factor care. Noncommunicable diseases (NCD) such as diabetes, respiratory diseases, cancer and heart diseases are taking a severe toll on public health across the WHO South-East Asia Region. Approximately 8.5 million lives, many of them premature, are lost each year due to NCDs, making them the region’s leading cause of death...

-The Hindu Report lauds scheme but finds fault with the government for not identifying deserving beneficiaries in each area Chennai: The deficit in local bodies such as Chennai Corporation was widening owing to the increase in expenditure on Amma Canteens. According to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on local bodies for the year ended March 31, 2015, the expenditure on Amma Canteens in 2014-2015 crossed Rs.100 crore in...

-Outlook A crusader for Dalit rights, Bezwada Wilson, on reclaiming for the Dalits a life of human dignity in a structurally apathetic society. On many occasions, the Ramon Magsaysay Award has been bestowed on individuals of various ilks and ideological persuasions. For the first time, perhaps, it speaks to an issue that touches the lives of millions of people because an award for Bezwada Wilson (50) is an international acknowledgement of the...