EVEN though the Right to Information Act guarantees citizens their right to know and expose corruption in government offices, increasing attacks on RTI activists have put this most important right in jeopardy. The RTI Act was enacted after a long struggle by civil rights organisations. However, those who dare question the ways of the powers that be and expose them are eliminated in cold-blooded murders. The manner in which Amit...

Faced with protests by farmers demanding higher compensation for land acquired for a township along the Taj Expressway, the Mayawati government on Tuesday decided to hike the price offered to them by 20 per cent at Rs 570 per square metre. A team of top state officials led by state cabinet secretary Sashankh Sekhar Singh and some senior ministers of the Mayawati government held parleys with farmer leaderRam Babu Kateria...

As the Mayawati government went into damage-control mode in a bid to contain the fallout of the Aligarh incident — in which four persons were killed in police firing on August 14 (unofficial reports have claimed that six farmers were killed) — clashes were reported on Monday as agitated farmers resorted to ‘chakka jam' on the Aligarh-Mathura highway. According to Inspector-General (Law and Order) A.P. Maheshwari, farmers blocked the Aligarh highway...

Suffering from extreme poverty and male oppression, the women of Darkali village in Madhya Pradesh, India, are now able to feed their families through employment under the MGNREGS. The wages obtained under the Scheme help them augment the family resource base. Jashmabai is working under the punishing sun on an earthen dam in her village of Darkali, in Madhya Pradesh's Alirajpur district, being built under the government-funded Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

Eleven women sarpanchs figure in the list of the 48 accused in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) fund scam in Gujarat’s Dahod taluka. Authorities, however, pointed out that the real culprits could be their husbands running the show by proxy on these reserved seats. Fatehsinh Pargi, a resident of Moti Shehra village in Fatehpura taluka, who brought the issue of non-payment of wages and manipulation of job...