-The Hindu Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...
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Push for cheap housing-Sobhana K
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre is planning to increase cash incentives for private builders willing to construct houses for economically weaker sections in partnership with it. Under the Affordable Housing in Partnership Scheme floated in 2009, the Centre was to pay private builders Rs 50,000 per dwelling unit or 25 per cent of the cost of civic services, whichever was less. Since the scheme found few takers, it is planning to...
More »Urban institute plan
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The housing ministry is thinking of setting up an institute of urban planning that will act as a think tank as well as train personnel in city planning. The Prime Minister will chair the governing body of the institute, which will be located in Delhi. The Delhi Development Authority has sanctioned five acres for the institute, to be built with a budget of Rs 300 crore. The government plans...
More »Millennium Development Goals are within reach, but stronger efforts needed –UN report
-The United Nations Thirteen years after the world set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), countries have made big strides to meet the eight anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline, says a United Nations report released today, which stresses that the unmet goals are still within reach, but nations need to step up their efforts to achieve them. "In more than a decade of experience in working towards the MDGs, we have learned...
More »Computer criterion in urban poor count -Sobhana K
-The Telegraph The SR Hashim committee, formed in 2010 to help identify the urban poor, has suggested criteria to automatically count in and count out households from the poverty list and assign scores to the rest. According to the recommendations, ownership of computer with an Internet connection will exclude a household from the poverty list. The report has been submitted to the housing and urban Poverty Alleviation ministry. Sources in the ministry described...
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