-Down to Earth UPA gives sops under MGNREGS to attract rural voters ahead of elections WITH most of its recent schemes struggling, a desperate UPA government is pinning its hopes on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to win votes in 2014 elections. The government is overhauling the employment scheme that helped it return to power in 2009 for a reason. It touches the lives of over 55 per cent...

-The Indian Express Chhattisgarh government is unable to accept the right to protest and unwilling to hear the people's voice. By going to town as the Chhattisgarh police and media have recently done on my alleged Maoist links, the real questions have been sidelined. As citizens of this country, do we have the right to protest democratically and constitutionally, and as journalists, researchers or human rights activists, are we free to pursue...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-Outlook Raipur (Chhattisgarh): Slow pace of development work resulting in blockage of over Rs 8 crore and alleged irregularities in implementation of MGNREGA through payment of excess wages to labourers have been noticed in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district. As against 865 works sanctioned under 13th Finance Commission, only 391 works were completed and against allotment of Rs 16.20 crore, expenditure of only Rs 7.97 crore was made and Rs 8.23 crore was blocked,...

-Deccan Herald Between 2005 and 2010, 140 lakh people were displaced from agriculture and 57 lakh jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. With a bountiful monsoon and a record foodgrain production, agriculture is going to be the saviour of the Indian economy in 2013-14. At a time when there is an all around doom and gloom -- industrial output failing to keep pace, manufacturing sector refusing to look up, joblessness growing,...