The annual confidential report (ACRs) of an IAS officer may now depend a lot on the administrative skills he shows in the implementation of several centrally-sponsored social sector programmes and how effectively he takes a district up on the developmental parameters. Concerned at largescale leakages in many of the social sector schemes, the Manmohan Singh government has asked its official auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), to change the...
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‘Bad management to blame for food inflation'
Planning Commission Member, Professor Abhijit Sen, has observed that bad management of food grains and a high economic growth rate, particularly in the non-agricultural sectors, had led to spiralling prices of food grains. Prof. Sen was delivering the Prof. L S. Venkataramanan Memorial Lecture on ‘Inclusive Growth', at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, here on Thursday. Prof. Sen said the economic growth rate of 9 per cent led to increased...
More »A Sieve Of A Scheme? by Chandrani Banerjee
* Documentary evidence gathered by the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Rajasthan points to large-scale embezzlement in nrega projects * Panchayats often furnish fake bills and fictitious companies have been floated to divert funds * Hundreds of crores are lost to this sort of leakage * The CAG, too, has pointed out large-scale irregularities and corruption in the implementation of NREGA projects...
More »“Civil society must push for self-regulation by media”
Concerned over disturbing trends in the media, including commercialisation and trivialisation of content, corporatisation of the sector and the phenomenon of paid news, the call for a “media watch group” was made at a round table discussion on “Markets, Media and Democracy” here on Tuesday. “There is a need for a public Auditing of the media, declaration of the revenue earned and checking on fraudulent news. It would be done best...
More »Sub-group to suggest toning up of rural job scheme
In the face of mounting criticism on the way the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Mgnregs) was being implemented arbitrarily, the Rural Development Ministry on Tuesday agreed to set up a sub-group to suggest measures for effective execution of the law. Conceding the demand raised at the meeting of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the governing body for the Mgnregs, Rural Development Minister C.P. Joshi formed a six-member...
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