Village Panchayat, Kaluana in district Sirsa figures among the best 11 panchayats in the country selected for their better performance in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) Scheme in 2009-10. While stating this here on Wednesday, an official spokesman said UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh honoured the panchayat in a function organised in New Delhi to mark the fifth anniversary of the scheme. MGNREGA...

Query on SC, ST status included; caste-based enumeration from June to September 2011 Census 2011, billed as the largest peacetime mobilisation in the world, will see the massive exercise of population enumeration across the country simultaneously, between February 9 and 28. Registrar-General and Census Commissioner C. Chandramouli said on Wednesday that the biggest-ever census attempted in the history of mankind to enumerate the country's 1.2-billion population would be conducted across 35...

The incarceration of Binayak Sen reminded me of the sophist philosopher Thrasymachus's definition of justice in Plato's Republic. Challenged by Socrates to define justice he says: "I proclaim that might is right, and justice is in the interest of the stronger...The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they...

Two-and-A-half years ago, Kandhamal was tagged as a “national shame”, after communal violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu seer left 38 people dead, with houses and churches burnt and vandalised, and thousands of people homeless. But on February 2, Kandhamal is set to get a different tag — one of “national pride” — as the Union Ministry of Rural Development awards it for being one of the top 10...

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase. THE dramatic increase in food inflation over the past two years has been associated with several surprises. One major surprise has been how the top economic policymakers in the country have responded to it. The initial response was one of apparent disbelief, followed very quickly by the...